Slave Girl
by roulette rouge
Summary: Chekov saves a slave girl from the Klingons...and ends up falling in love with her. Chekov/OC.
1. Part I: Chekov's Escape

**PROLOGUE:**

_**CHEKOV'S ESCAPE**_

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* * *

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Pavel Chekov was young. He could at least venture into that self-deprecating train of musings, though it made his Russian blood simmer with revulsion at his own thought process. As he sat there in contemplative repose, back against the wall, his head bowed so that the relentless drip that cascaded from some leaking pipe above him pelted his now frizzy and unkempt curls.

It was dank and dark and a repugnant scent filled the air with a thick intensity that would make even the most durable man sputter and choke. But Chekov had passed the nearly unbearable state of olfactory mourning a long time ago; the pale flesh of his wrists, however, were beginning to chafe against the harsh bite of steel and plastic cuffs.

All he needed was a plan. He needed to find a plausible way to relinquish the cruel hold of the cuffs around his more than capable wrists and trigger a malfunction in the system that would allow him enough time to escape, and therefore generate a distress call to the Enterprise. After they beamed him back to the ship, he would resume his duties.

Of course they'd still need him…how in the world would they replace his prodigious scientific aptitude in such allotted time? They were searching for him, he knew. Or at least, he hoped, he prayed. Conflicted, Chekov assured himself indignantly, with the help of little Russian curses, that the crew had not abandoned him out of sheer frustration at his newfound ability to find himself in a less than fortunate situation. The edge to his curses lent him not a glimmer of hope; in fact, it only made the suspension in purgatory more agonizing than the chafing on his wrists that had now elevated into sores from his consistent movements.

Day one had at last faded into the gray early morning of the imprisonment, and already, as little dashes of rose-pink and orange sunlight began to creep across the horizon, the formula for an escape plan had molded itself in Chekov's head. As his captors entered the code for the door and herded a willowy, demure looking woman into the ice-stricken hold, Chekov dared not draw his eyes away from the scene. Nor would he allow the memory of the code to flicker out of his mind as the opening to the hold grew wider, the mouth of the entrance yawning as it coaxed another bout of frozen air into the damp compartment. He felt his cheeks swell with a surge of warmth as his thin body attempted to ward off the impending cold.

Across the little amount of space that separated the two, Chekov scrutinized his newly found company. From the manner of her tattered garments and slump of her meager shoulders, he could easily identify her as a Klingon slave, but unmistakably human. She shuddered, enveloping her frame with quaking arms as her eyes wandered around the hold, taking in the aura of her surroundings. At last, her languid gaze drifted over Chekov, who watched her intently, waiting for her to take note of his presence. Her focus sharpened almost instantly.

"I will get us out of here, da?" He hissed quietly across the stretch of rusted metal that separated the two hostages.

She furrowed her brow merely a moment, processing his difficult pronunciation, and then nodded.

"I just need to get us out of these cuffs…here, come," he motioned her over, taking a hasty glance toward the bolted door. "I will not hurt you. You can trust me."

She said nothing, but heeded his beckoning. Carefully, her eyes drifting solemnly toward the door to make certain they would not be caught, she inched toward Chekov, reaching him in a matter of moments.

"Now, enter the code 9398564."

The cuffs slid off as the girl entered the code.

"Turn around," he said. "We have to hurry, before they take off and we cannot escape. I can have us beamed back to the starship I am assigned to, and they will help us."

A low, throaty rumbling sound began to shudder like trembling jolts throughout the large expanse of cabin. Chekov wasted not a moment in pondering the sound; he knew it all too well, and snatched the girl's hand, who was taken by surprise as she craned her neck toward the resonation of the thunderous engines.

_9398563…_

"Jump!" He shouted, and before the girl had even a moment's hesitation, Chekov shoved her out of the cargo entrance, and took the plunge a second after. The ship lifted off the snowy, ice-covered terrain and climbed toward the atmosphere, where it disappeared behind a film of thick white clouds.

"Easy, nyet?" he chuckled, brushing the flakes of ice that had stubbornly clung to his mustard yellow uniform. The girl lay like a broken porcelain doll in the snow, splayed and fractured in her brown woolen rags.

"Are you alright?" He asked, lifting her up with a gentle tug. "I am sorry if I at all hurt you."

She gave him a small smile of gratitude, and Chekov was glad to see not a flicker of doubt or resentment lay in the fields of color of her eyes.

"I am Pavel Chekov," he said, pulling out the hand on which her head had been resting and clasping it with hers.

"Lily," she said.

Chekov grinned cordially and, noticing the girl looked as if she were about to faint from the intense cold, shrugged the jacket from his sinewy shoulders.

"I will get you back home for you, Lily," he promised. "Wherever that could be."

* * *

A/N:

I loved Pavel Chekov. Hands down. Original series, and in the new Star Trek 2009. So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to my story. Action and romance! Anyway, I warn you - my writing is not up to par. I usually write better than this, so expect better.

Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.


	2. Part I: Radio Waves

**CHAPTER ONE:**

_**RADIO WAVES**_

* * *

It hardly took long before the mechanic gears in Chekov's mind began to whir and toggle their way through his newfound dilemma.

His radio had been dashed during their plunge, colliding, inevitably, with the harsh glacial surface, the same soft, fresh flecks of silver-white that ensnared the soot black of his boots now. But this was only one quandary for which Chekov found himself slowly sifting through the quiet caverns of his mind, exhuming cadaverous answers that, before, had seemed vibrant and alive with promise.

He hoped very dearly that he could reanimate them, make them whole, before his reserved, rather muted companion became little more than an ice sculpture in the midst of a bleak and frozen wasteland.

Before long, Chekov had found himself nearly bursting with revelation and, being prone to agitated and frantic behaviors in light of such happenstances, began to murmur exuberantly to himself. Unbeknownst to Chekov, his chaotic self-praises had not gone undetected, and the more poor Lily sharpened her ears to perceive the cryptic Russian wanderings that was his speech, the more she distrusted his ostensible sanity.

"Alright, here is a plan -" he had suddenly whirled around, frightening the girl nearly out of her wits as her focus on this unforeseen bout of surreptitious vanity and self-absorption had been almost trance-like.

Startled, the girl released a high-pitched gasp which, in turn, staggered young Chekov in his unpredicted onslaught of conversation. He shifted, foot curling cautiously backward until the entirety of his weight rested squarely on his heels.

"Forgive me," he offered her an assuaging smile. "I have forgotten; you are not so accustomed to my – unorthodox ways of thinking as the crew."

"No, no," she tugged on the sharp-edged lapels of his jacket, still trembling beneath its woolen bulk. "It's me….I'm out of sorts, not myself. You know?"

"Da, I know," he replied.

He outstretched his long, mustard-hued sleeve, and delicate whorls of silver-white began to speckle the vibrant yellow material.

"I have made a promise that I would get you back to home," his long, milk-pale fingers furled softly around her slight, wiry arm. "And you know – the Russians inwented promises. I would be destroying the wery foundations of the culture if I dared break my promise to you, Lily."

"The Russians 'inwented' oaths? Is that so?" She asked, and formed the inquiry as to ascertain genuine interest, as Chekov seemed adamant about the authenticity and accomplishments of his origins. But a glimmer of a laugh ghosted through the tone of her voice, and as Chekov's ear caught this little wisp of quicksilver, he furrowed his brow most disgracefully, and halted in his tracks.

"You laugh! And yet I tell the wery truth!" He stated ferociously. "We Russians are good men and women! Brave warriors too."

"_Women_?" She queried, and deep thought lines began to trace their shadowed form into the flesh-soft planes of her features. "Did you say…vermin?"

Chekov looked pained, and Lily realized the poor creature must have had a plethora of awful experiences indeed in attempting to communicate with his fellow Starfleet officers.

"Nyet, my dear girl, _women_. You know, girls, females?"

"Oh, right. You mean women."

"Yes, women...that it is what I said," he grinned, and Lily was immensely grateful that he had not interpreted her mirthful humor as a slight against his beloved culture.

She curled her arm until its hold, within the crook of Chekov's elbow, settled deeper into the radiating waves of warmth his body provided. Her limbs revived, if even only achieving a fraction of their former dexterities. "Your accent is thick, and from the way you speak of Russia – you must miss home very much, and only just left it behind."

"Da, the computer does not understand what it is I am saying, half of time," he shrugged, and the mass of his shoulder brushed against hers, a gesture as soft and inconspicuous as a ephemeral breath of forgotten breeze. A laugh, a flimsy replica of hilarity, permeated the tufts of warmth that lingered before him, gloomy, hazy little gray things that reminded Lily so much of the clouds at home - on Earth.

"But, you are eh - right. I miss my dearest Russia wery much."

It was the first time Lily had really been offered the opportunity to take a glimpse of her rescuer, and though his countenance had wilted under a crippling surge of nostalgia and whimsical musing, it was inevitable that she would discover such a thing whilst in his company. Her cheeks flooded with a dose of healthy color, not this dull, aching emptiness of ruddy skin as a side-effect of a near-frozen body, as she realized he was handsome.

She deliberated why it was she hadn't taken heed of this verity before.

"So," She fixated her gaze on a safe expanse of blinding white ground, which began to crunch beneath her feet as the snow hardened. "What is your plan, Pavel? I'm afraid I distracted you before…"

"Oh, da! How silly of me, how could I so easily forget?" He chuckled, planting a self-reprimanding palm to his pale forehead. "Especially with your nearly freezing."

He patted her arm reassuringly.

"It would be cold of me to let you freeze...if you will excuse the pun."

Cloaked in the fresh, unruffled chasms of his mind, Chekov began to momentarily drift away from focus, and, as he mulled over afresh the conceptions of his escape plan, the togs droning and humming and pulsating faster now that Lily's skin had begun to adopt a strange tinge of pale blue to her unhealthy pallor. He raked his teeth over the cold-pinched, pink flesh of his bottom lip, brow curling into that of a contemplative manner.

He even nearly forgot all about the unrelenting cold.

Lily appraised him, searching for any sign of legitimate life when he sparked back to animation, like a glint of flame ignited with the flick of a careless wrist.

"Look here, Lily-" his stature bent, broken in its towering formation as he motioned toward the wall of a nearby range of jagged mountain. The precipices of these colossal white beings, in relation to their insignificant size, seemed worlds away from their miniscule existence.

"Those mountains there. See there, how that one is smaller than its brothers? There we will wait for the Enterprise, and then we can help you. But first, I must fix my communicator."

"How are you going to do that, Pavel? There aren't any batteries for miles, and there's certainly no electrical current running through the ground."

"Trust me, Lily. I know what it is I am doing," he assured her, and then let go of her arm. She was sorry for it, and began to feel the authenticity of his thrumming warmth ebb away with the white-flecked tide.

"Besides, the Russians, they inwented battery and wires!"

Lily laughed and followed his fast-fading footsteps as the encroaching wind swept across the arctic plains.

"I'm sure they did, Pavel…I'm sure they did."

…Smothering any inclination and memory that they had ever been there at all.

* * *

Hours passed, and the white dawn that had risen and fallen like the frothing crest of an earthen wave settled into early morning, watery and cold with the relentless snowfall. Chekov worked vigilantly, and while these same hours, which drove him into a state of rapid exertion, glistened in the light of the sallow, sparkling light, he had lost all hope for efforts of communication from his soft-mannered companion.

She lay sprawled across the snow, her cheeks bereft of all color and her pale flaxen curls spilled like white-gold across the barren, insipid ground. All of her competency and aptitudes dissolved into one primal ability – to shiver, and press her numbed cheek against Chekov's damp slacks, as stark against the white threshold as ink blots upon blank paper.

At first, in an attempt to revive Lily from her frozen stupor, he endeavored to build a roaring fire, a consistent heat that the little broken figurine could nestle into, one that would not fade like his artificial human warmth. It did not take long for the poor boy to configure his mistake; it only took a fleeting glimpse of her glass-like fragility, lying there beneath only his cold, clammy jacket.

He entertained his mind as he toggled the electrical wires, which now slithered from within the insides of the exposed insides of the device in dull colors of reds and greens and blues, and dipped them in the makeshift ice bowl he'd fashioned out of a lump of snow and a scrap of useless metal he'd separated from the radio.

As inept as the old-fashioned contrivance was, it was able to reach across three planets to establish a transmitting correlation between the drifting ship and its lost crewman. However, it was tricky to fix in its ancient infiltrating structure and his fingers were beginning to numb over the grueling hours he'd been working.

Another glance over at Lily, who was now blinking wearily up at him, her lips unmistakably touched by a pale light of blue.

He hadn't much time; she would be vanquished in a matter of hours by hypothermia.

"Come, come you stupid mechanism…" he growled, and a spurt of Russian profanities spouted in watery trickles from between clenched teeth.

A violent shudder coursed through him, a mind-numbing chill conforming to the naturally masculine heat of his body. _Perhaps if I throw you against the wall, I did...then you would work!_

He connected the last of the wires and, satisfied by the improvised arrangement of the apparatus, he poised his blue-tinged thumb over the toggle switch.

"Work for the lady, da?" He murmured, grimacing as he lowered his finger to the small red knob.

In a swift movement, he flicked his thumb over the button, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, as if the miniscule thing would detonate, or perhaps something much more devastating…do nothing at all.

But no sooner did he brave the task of switching on the newly designed machine, a voice infiltrated the speakers. It was ravaged by static, and almost entirely incomprehensible, but Chekov had never heard anything ring with such clarity before. It was Commander Spock! And he'd never thought he would be so infinitely delighted to hear his monotonous voice in the history of his short life upon the Enterprise.

Dear, dear Spock, whom he respected so exceptionally!

…_Ensign Chekov, Chekov. Come in, Ensign Chekov. What is your position. I repeat. Your position. Over._

"Da! Da, Commander Spock. Chekov, serial numbar _656-5827B. _Location, class M planet Delta Wega. I repeat; Delta Wega."

_Await our appearance, Ensign Chekov; we shall arrive shortly. Do not relocate your position. I repeat, do not relocate your position._

"Aye, commander."

Spock faded into the confusion of frenzied static.

Chekov pocketed the radio, releasing the chilled metal from his trembling hand and proceeded to lift Lily's languid body into his arms. She muttered something, small tufts of warm breath emitting from her mouth as she spoke; her words were weakened, and her voice faltered as he furled her closer to his heat, hoping, praying they would not be too late to save her.

In one last desperate endeavor to revive her from her comatose state, he reached for the hem of his mustard-hued shirt, lifting it over his coiled, dampened hair. He began to quiver violently in the wake of the biting cold wind, shrouding his body in a wintry shadow, and he, himself, felt the commencement of numbness overwhelm his dulling senses.

Breath quickening, he peeled the ratted tawny dress from her form, hastening the removal of his slacks as her head lolled back and she became completely unresponsive to his touch.

"Come, come Lily. Wake, Wake!"

He fell to his knees, swathing her limp figure with his long, thin arms before collapsing, splayed across what was left of his weatherworn jacket.

A shroud concealed his vision, and all that was brilliant white faded into a canvas of impenetrable darkness.

* * *

**A/N:**

**The next installment in this silly little love story! I hope you are enjoying it so far and, from the reviews I have gotten, I am glad to say I have been inspired to keep writing as much as I can this weekend. I am going to see Star Trek again hopefully tonight and Monday. CAN'T WAIT ! :D**

**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**


	3. Part I: Disillusionment

_**CHAPTER TWO:**_

_**DISILLUSIONMENT**_

_**A/N:**_

_**Yay! I got this out quicker than I thought! Here's chapter two! **_

_**I'm hoping to have the next out tomorrow night, if I'm not tired from homework and school.**_

_**Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, as feedback is appreciated and welcomed!**_

_**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**_

_**Lily belongs to me.**_

_**Chekov's Pronunciation of Lily:**_

_**Lee-lee.**_

* * *

_Ensign Chekov, respond._

_Ensign Chekov, if you perceive any notion of movement, raise your right hand._

_Let me handle this, Commander Spock. I have a way with words…_

_Chekov, if you don't wake up right this instant, I'm going to shove a tricorder the size of a yardstick where the sun don't shine._

"Please, in the name of all things beautifully Russian, do no that…"

The first of all things taken into consideration of Chekov's surroundings was that they were blanch and incandescently white, the blurred edges of the walls emanating a vehement radiance, which he doubted was relative to the settings, but the slight fever that burned throughout his wearied system. Shapeless faces appeared in his line of vision, both suspended over him in a manner that suggested worry, perhaps even agitation, by the way their postures seemed taut, even sharp-edged in his unstable perception.

A blotted, flesh-colored object, though ostensibly harmless by its gentle prodding and probing, deliberated his temperature and tapped on his lips, so that his mouth, stiff from lack of use, parted and lay exposed fto the mercy of the appraising white-gloved fingertips. Yes, that was what they were. Fingers. Same callused, bone-structured familiarity, and the fact that they seemed to harbor a caustic and impatient personality all their own indicated that they weren't just any competent and practiced pair of hands – they were the property of Bones McCoy himself.

"He'll be fine, Commander," Bones muttered as he frowned, his voice dismantled from its usual intensity as he devoted all focus to the hypospanner in his hand. "A treatment of antibiotics should regulate his system, and he can return to his obligations tomorrow. That is, if he doesn't wiggle his way into another compromising situation before this treatment is completed."

"My utmost gratitude, Doctor McCoy, for your patience," Spock replied dutifully.

"Yeah, right. If that's what you'd call it…"

Bones' steadied hand descended toward the uncovered portion of vulnerable flesh on Chekov's arm, hypospanner still clenched between inexorably steadfast fingers.

Chekov's distorted sight, impaired by sleep and bewilderment by the sudden onslaught of sterile medical gloves and the doctor's mordant conduct, gradually returned to its natural astute clarity. He blinked, merely overridden by relief to find the recognizable stoic countenance of his commanding officer and the habitual scowl of the acerbic doctor, beloved by all, despite his otherworldly talent to achieve pessimism and temper. The boy couldn't have been happier to see anyone else –

"Commander, were is she?"

Spock's otherwise composed features gradually melded together, his brow gathering into an analytical, speechless mark of question. "She, Chekov?"

"Da, Commander. My _podruga_, Lily...where is she?"

Bones administered the injection into the oblivious boy's arm, and meanwhile Chekov gazed up at his commanding officer with searching eyes, bright and penetrating with anticipation. Spock was unnerved by the sudden manifestation of Chekov's seemingly conspicuous delusions and the strength of their appearance. He turned to Bones, who was unaware of the situation at hand as he prepared to inject the second dose of treatment.

"Doctor McCoy, have you any recollection of such a patient?"

"No, sir. I don't know a Lily, nor do I ever want to know one."

Chekov's chest began to heave, desperation and hysteria filling the hollows of gaping doubt and trepidation in his eyes. Spock observed with hardly a depiction of normal reaction toward the boy's panic, and Bones was otherwise engaged in the delicate activity of administering medication. He realized he would receive no direct answer from either of them, only vague side-steps and insinuations. She was either dead, dying or had never been discovered, lying beneath the half-naked body of the hypothermic boy, desperate to save her, while they had only been too adamant about his life to inquire after the existence of another.

"I am having to see her, comman'der. Request permission to enter the Sick Bay?"

"Request denied. You must recover not only your physical health, but mental as well, if you are to return to homeostasis in the proper manner. The only logical way to do this is to rest, as the body will mend itself and any additional damage it might have received upon your capture."

"I must see her, sir. It is a matter that is great importance!"

"Sir, there is a girl under medical watch in the Sickbay. Her identity, as of yet, is unknown, brought in two days ago, a few hours after Chekov," Bones laid the emptied syringe on the medical tray beside him, suddenly aloof as he conjured vague memories of the situation. "But I don't know-"

That had been enough for Chekov. It hardly mattered whether the next words that escaped the doctor's mouth were 'dead', 'alive' or 'she might not make it'; it was the verifiable fact that she was here, on this ship, swathed in warming medical gauze and attached to an incubator. Still drawing breath, still with beating heart, and her live, malleable flesh, not yet consumed by rigor mortis. It meant his promise had not been condemned, his honor uncompromised, and his companion, with whom he'd suffered long hours of potential frostbite and mind-numbing, ice-tarnished consciousness…was still possibly alive.

Without a moment's warning for his fellow crewmen, Chekov threw back his stiff coverlets and bounded for the door, the coverlets fluttering behind him like coattails caught in a malevolent breeze. He darted past the human obstructions impeding his duty to his mission, nearly triggering a staggering collision with one unfortunate man who had a thick mound of PADD's balanced in his arms.

"Excuse me, sir, I must get through! Pardon me, sir! Pardon me!"

He skidded around an uncalculated corner. It was the same one that he had swung around with the exuberance of a newborn colt countless times but, in his mindless rush, could never account for in his burst-full memory bank, which seemed inept in cases such as these, and he abandoned reason of doubt and calculation altogether in his purposeful scurries.

"Lily!" He slid into Sickbay, hearing the muffled, impending thud of persistent footsteps resound behind him.

Chekov discovered his lack of isolation in the vast expanse of white-burnished room, glossed in a sanitary haze, and the consistent blips of life perforated the walls, made them jump and contract and move with the rhythm of pounding hearts. Despite his indecency, and the possibility that any one of the comatose, or otherwise unconscious, patients might awake at any given moment, the reckless boy tore off the blanched sheets with his eyes, searching, aching for the assurance that his friend had not died, while he had been allowed to live, to prosper.

He arrived at the last cot, peeling back the bland sheets to find Lily's tranquil face, washed and polished in tendrils of undiscovered dreams, and the white sheets seemed to pale in comparison to the ashen consistency of her pallor. His heart slowed, his veins ceased to pulsate with the toxins of adrenaline racing throughout his system. He suddenly felt so incomparably weary, but his expression glowed.

"Ah, praise Hashem, she's ali-"

"Stop!"

It was Bones, at least that was unmistakable amongst the clamor of heightened pulses and cries of distress that erupted from the surrounding roused patients. The doctor leapt at Chekov, soaring across the short amount of space that separated them, cutting through it like knives through crepe paper. His face was devoured by the same panic that had thoroughly infested Chekov's own pounding heart, racing mind, swollen lungs…only moments before.

But Bones was so much larger than slender, gawky Chekov, and the impact was so ferocious and breathtaking that his head whirled violently and stars erupted in flashes of blinding light before his eyes. His lungs felt as if they had deflated, and he couldn't breathe, not with Bones' hulking figure crushing him into the hard, unyielding floor.

Like Spock, whose iron-wrought expression seemed as stiff as the expanse of floor beneath him, becoming more rigid with suppressed ferocity every step he took. Bones lifted himself off the restrained adolescent and glowered at him, dauntless with undulating rage. His eyes flashed vehemently.

"Are you out of your Russian mind?" He quipped, but behind the irate remark, small imprints of apprehension pocketed themselves in the hollows of his mind.

"You have only just recovered from hypothermia. Have you any idea what you could have done to yourself? You could have broken something, ruptured a vein, hell, you could have smashed your head against the wall and hemorrhaged!"

"I had to rush, sir, it was my only hope for finding her…"

"That's not what I meant, kid," he growled, standing up and yanking a disoriented Chekov up with him, resuming his full height. "Don't be so literal."

Spock halted before the heaving couple, one eyebrow lifting from its impassive repose. It rose into a perfect arch, and not a pigment of skin was lifted out of place. He seemed almost stone-like in his stance, a statue of polished, flesh-hued marble.

"It is just this condition that the Vulcans used to teach their younglings," Spock stated coolly. "To convince them the liberties of an emotionless world. Reckless human sentiment is hardly engaging in the face of illogical danger and defeat."

"Commander," Chekov insisted. "I had to see her! Request permission for amnesty, sir!"

"Return to your cot, Ensign. And do not remove yourself from its comforts until you are fully regenerated and able to return to your duties. When you have recovered, you will inform us the details of your capture," He turned, unremittingly stony, to Bones. "Assist Chekov to his cot and administer the appropriate tranquilizer to ensure he remains there."

"Aye, commander," Chekov remarked, and bowed his head as he allowed Bones to usher him out of the room, his arm within the vice grip of the frustrated doctor.

But before he disappeared from the room entirely, he risked a glance over his shoulder, just to assure himself she was there, and would be when he awoke. And maybe she'd hope he was alive too, anticipating his survival, his escape from the horrors of numbness in the ice world.

Just like he had hoped for.

His insides began to squirm uncomfortably, and one weakened hand clenched urgently over his stomach.

Chekov groaned. "You have crushed my insides," he sputtered. "Now I am to die."

"Shut up," Bones snapped. "Maybe you should have thought of that before running buck wild through the corridors, like some loony escaped from the nuthouse."

* * *

Out of all the useful information Chekov had required as an Ensign aboard the USS Enterprise, it was learning that recovery was insufferably dull which seemed the most vital part of information of the bunch.

At first, after he had revived from his drug-induced stupor, he wasn't quite sure what to do. He spent the first half hour plucking loose strings from the coverlet, disposing of them carelessly as he flung them to the floor, sighing half-heartedly when the task lost its former shine and grew tiresome, uninteresting. A search around the room provided him with an hour's gratuitous form of entertainment in counting the tiles on the ceiling. But as time wore on, and he passed five hundred, this diversion faded into the lackluster environment of his indifference, and he relinquished the cause as he searched for something even mildly amusing to pass the weary hours with.

His chance arrived with the appearance of Bones, who'd come merely to administer necessary medication and confirm vital signs.

"Dr. McCoy, might I have a read?" Chekov beseeched as the doctor pressed a steady finger to his wrist, counting quietly to himself. "Or something to waste hours. _M__ne skuchno_!"

"I got something for you, something that might take a while," Bones replied languidly, and looked up at him. "How about you count how many light years it will take for you to grow some vigilance and subtlety? Maybe then we won't let another helpless species go extinct looking for your sorry Russian ass."

Chekov had frowned at the insult. "Just a minute now, doctor. Russians are known for the wigilance and poise, and that is what I am!"

"If what you say is so damned true, then start acting like one," he'd said. "I know this is hard for you arrogant, brazen foreigners to understand, but maybe, if you don't act like an egotistical fool all the time, you'll spend a lot less time in a dripping prison cell and more time helping people, which is why you joined Starfleet, isn't it?"

"Of course why, doctor! Why else would I leave my Russia for?"

"Escapes me, Chekov. Women too hairy in Russia for you?"

"Russian women are lovely." Chekov had argued.

"I'll get you a PADD if you'll pipe down," he'd relented. "You're hurting my American ears with all that feigned foreigner's superiority."

Though Chekov was painfully aware of Bones' disapproval of his youthful rashness and the fact that he was notorious for getting captured on missions, he was also entirely grateful that the doctor had not abandoned him there without so much as a dust mite to keep him company. Despite the bitter, biting cold and the likelihood of death under such harsh conditions, and though he adored the Enterprise and her captain, Chekov could not help but wish he were back on Delta Vega. At least there he would have a companion, and a bit of conversation to pass the fitful hours and restless musings.

The thought flitted through his mind, as he thumbed meditatively through a defining volume on the Klingon species, that if he were on Earth, it would have begun to grow dark, little edges of dark blue velvet trimming the horizon as it slowly sunk into the last fractures of a faltering red-orange miasma. He missed sunsets and sunrises, even though, during the earlier stages of adolescent youth, he'd been under the spell of sleep and wistful wanderlust to take heed of the climbing and falling of the sun, or any of its frivolities for that matter. Now that he didn't have it anymore, he wished so ardently he could have it back, if even for a day. Just once.

"Hello there…" Said a voice.

Chekov was startled out of his concentrated brooding. In fact, he had been so bewildered by the suddenness of the voice's appearance, that he lost all train of thought and even dropped his book in the midst of his frightened jolting.

He looked up to find Lily, her pale-blonde curls frizzy with sleep, and her eyes weary and rimmed with shadows. She held her short fingers over her mouth, but no matter of concealment could dismantle the trace of a smothered chuckle hidden by forceful fingertips.

"I hope I didn't scare you," she admitted, leaning against the automatic door as it closed behind her. "I have a bad habit of sneaking up on people."

"I will be alright, Miss Lily," Chekov grinned, endeavoring to hide the ambush of a flush, spreading like wildfire across his cheeks, and feeling just as intolerably hot. "I was only just thinking for you."

She raised a questioning brow. "Oh really?" She laughed. "It looked as if you had all your thoughts wound around that book there…." Her mirth faded, and a wide-eyed look seized her features. "Not that I'm jealous, no. That'd be silly. Being jealous of a...you know, a book."

It was his turn to laugh, and he was in no mood to turn down such an offer of hilarity. "It newer crossed my brain that you were jealous, nyet," he assured her, then tilted his head inquiringly as she sat down in the chair beside his bed and he bent down to retrieve his book, where it lay in a display of rumbled pages. "Actually I was going to ask – what are you doing here?"

She began to wring her hands, watching them with sheepish eyes, as if apologizing to them. "Actually, I wanted to um….I wanted to say thank you. For saving me," she confessed. "It was awful brave of you."

He flushed again, and cursed his energetic skin for its blushing and blundering. "Ah, it wasn't anything. Anything to save a pretty girl."

Something of a giggle erupted from the dainty confines of her throat, and she looked up at him from beneath her dark lashes.

"Alright, so I am not as suave as the keptin," he said. "I am making practicing. I must get it down someday!"

"Pavel," she replied. "Your captain can have all the smooth-talking charm he wants. It's heart that counts, and you have an abundance of it."

"Keptin Quirk 'as more than enough heart, Miss Lily-"

"I'm sure he does," Lily shrugged, her shoulders lolling awkwardly throughout the motion. "But I saw yours first."

She reached forward and gave his chest a soft pat, vitalizing her point. The place her hand touched burned slightly through the cotton-thin material of the medical gown, a soft burn, almost like the heat of the sun brushing against bare skin.

"So," she said, gesturing to the book in Chekov's lap with her eyes. "You like xenoarchaeology?"

He glanced nonchalantly at the book, and in a self-important manner, shrugged his thin shoulders. "Of course, I am into more than science, but…science, it is my calling."

"Like what?" She asked.

"Motorcycles…they are so fast! Like riding on the wind!"

"Motorcycles, huh? So there is a bit of a teenager in you yet," she noted, smiling as she did so. "What else?"

"Mathematics, especially Calculus. Wery interesting. And history. Especially that of the greatest civilization known to man."

"And what is that?"

"The Russians, of course, my dear girl!"

She shook her head, laughing at his obvious egotism. "You are one silly boy, Pavel Chekov," she wagged a finger at him, the smile in her eyes never wavering. "But I must say, you are more than enough of a friend to allow me decades of amusement."

Chekov brightened at the thought of camaraderie. "You think of we as friends, da?"

She cocked her head to the side. "Of course I do. You saved my life and managed to make me laugh in the process," she said. "How else would I think of you?"

"A uh – special Russian pet?"

She laughed and shook her head. "No, no silly. You are most definitely my friend. And since it is late, I must be getting back to bed. I am sure the doctor will be coming in to check on me soon."

"I come and eh see you tomorrow, nyet?" He asked, watching as she rose to leave, abandoning her seat to cold, sterile air.

"I certainly hope so," she said, lingering by the door. "In fact, I'll be looking forward to it."

"It will be promised, then," he assured her. "I will be there."

She admonished teasingly, "You make a lot of promises. Are you sure you can keep them all?"

Reciprocating her teasing manner, Chekov inflated his chest pompously, placing his hand over his heart, as if swearing oath. "A Russian never makes promise he does not keep."

"I'm sure they don't," she chuckled, shaking her head. She looked back at him. "I will see you tomorrow, Pavel. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Lily." He called after her, and his voice tapered off as she disappeared into the corridor, the door sliding shut automatically behind her.

And as soon as she was gone, the last of her presence dissipating from the room, Chekov could not help but notice his heart had slowed. Not in a way that indicated fear, but that rushing sort of sensation that gushes through one's system, igniting one's body into a burst of energy, like fireworks.

With his source of amusement gone for the night, Chekov picked up his book again from his lap and continued hopes of not only impressing Spock, to revitalize his image of honor and vigilance when it came to his duty for the Enterprise…

But also in dire hopes of impressing Lily.


	4. Part I: New Mission

**CHAPTER THREE**

_**NEW MISSION**_

**A/N:**

**Next installment! It's a little languid in writing, but I hope it will do, as it serves as the beginning of the adventure part of this story. I'm not sure of its size, but I think it's about medium length, at 7 pages on microsoft word and 3,230 words.**

**Anyway, thanks for all the wonderful feedback, and I'm hoping to get this story on a roll soon!**

**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**

**Lily belongs to me.**

**Chekov's Pronunciation of Lily:**

**Lee-lee.**

* * *

Morning came too sluggishly for Chekov. He had wanted an unveiling of splendor and elegance and, most of all, _speed_. Like a prisoner, he had been manacled to his cot the entire night, suffering the steely aroma of sanitizer and harsh notes of bleach hidden within in the threads of the starch-white fabric. After Lily's departure for the night, and the event in which Klingons became more of a devilish seed for nightmares rather than educational leisure, Chekov had curled into the sheets, roused awake by the perpetual bustle of the ship.

At first, the monotone hum had been a source of frustration as he desperately pursued sleep in the midst of the ship's droning song. But as the lively hours faded into early black morning, the song morphed itself gradually into that of a soothing lullaby. He slipped into a deep, dark sleep just as traces of gray began to rim the wearied night.

It felt as if he had not a draught of peaceful somnolence at all once Bones had barged into the room, chasing away the dreaming shadows, and flicking on the penetrating, cold lights. That, Chekov mused sleepily, or the petulant doctor merely had a knack for curing petty symptoms, no matter how vital they were to everyday necessity; the spell of sleep had seemed to dissipate entirely the moment Bones had summoned him from his stupor.

Chekov simply blinked at the floor, vision bleary and unfocused, weaving in and out of blurred concentration as he resigned to his trance-like state. The doctor said nothing to wake him from his daze, and threw a pair of boots his way. The burnished black things, colossal compared to the boy's slight build, collided with his chest and, though he was not injured by the impact, the wind was certainly knocked straight from his unsuspecting lungs.

"You a wery grumpy man, Doctor McCoy," Chekov murmured jadedly as he stroked his drowsy eyes with slow, deliberate hands.

Bones wrenched the lazy hands away and began scanning his temperature with the tricorder. Chekov's eyes followed the dizzying movement and his head began to whirl.

"Commander Spock is on his way now to Sickbay to derive from each of you recollections of your separate captures. This way we can perhaps learn the design of their plans without having to go and ask a barbaric alien civilization apparently bent on the destruction of humankind, by the way known for their atrocious torture methods, themselves," Bones instructed, and as he mentally noted Chekov's temperature. "I suggest, since you are now late, that you get your Russian backside over to Sickbay before Commander Spock gets there first."

"Da, I will, I go now," Chekov rose from his perch on the bed and hobbled toward the automatic door, now beginning to ascertain a pocket of energy as he shuffled along.

The door slid open, giving a warning hiss as it began to close behind him, and Bones, who had stalked off toward Sickbay. Chekov scuttled after him and, once he had established a similar pace with the doctor's long, resolute strides, he bit his lip and wondered if he should ask such a trivial question, especially to someone so unendingly cantankerous and overbearing.

"Speak your mind," Bones said wearily, pointing out the boy's distinctive exuberance. "But only if it's a medical question. I won't bother with useless pomp, and I don't think I'll be able to stand even the slightest mention of the word Russian."

"Of course sir, it is a medical question," Chekov piped defensively. "I would newer attempt to waste the time of yours, Doctor!"

"Too late, kid," the doctor retorted. "Get to the damn question already, would you?"

"I am eh, feeling off lately."

"Feeling off how? Details, boy, I need details."

"Sweat palms, and something is fluttering in my stomach, like eh, flutteries-"

"Butterflies…"

"Da, butteryflies! And rapid heart, and…"

"You have a crush. I can't believe someone as brilliant as you couldn't figure out the difference between medical emergencies and time wasters. Which, thank you very much, I have now successfully wasted five good seconds of my life listening to the side-effects of your nonexistent love life. Now, move it."

They had reached the automatic doors and entered Sickbay as the thick metal slabs whirred softly and slid open, allowing them to access the quiet, blinding white room, where two others were standing toward the back, near the vast window with electronic shutters. Bones thrust Chekov forward as he spoke and he nearly lost his footing, but before he could stumble, he was ushered forward once again by the forceful hands of the impudent doctor.

"Ju deed not tell me zat Captain Quirk would be eere!" Chekov muttered, his voice hushed away from the two tall, intimidating figures standing beside the veiled window.

"Didn't want to ruin the big surprise for you," Bones admitted, sarcasm dripping from the very stem of his voice.

He spotted Lily, wiry curls disheveled and coiled and pale as ever, and her eyes were listless with sleep; his heart pounded erratically, the resonation reaching deep into his body, and the echo seemed to have reached the very base of his toes. An adamant hope crossed Chekov's restless mind, already dizzy with so many thoughts, that she would not notice the battering sound, almost like a detonation within his aching ribs.

"Commander, here's the Russian runt you ordered."

Bones harshly impelled Chekov forward, and the boy cast a rather dark look toward the doctor. "I am no runt," he said. "I will grow into myself, just you see!"

"Sit down, Chekov," Kirk gestured to a chair beside Lily, who's expression seemed to flourish and enliven at the sight of her lanky companion. "We're not here to insult you. Bones just likes to roughen you up a bit, make you a man. You get what I'm saying, don't you?"

"Request permission, Keptin, for your not say that," Chekov muttered as he slid somberly into his seat beside Lily. She nudged him softly with her emaciated elbow.

"Permission granted, Ensign," Spock intervened. "Now that we have all successfully convened, I am under the impression you are both aware of your entailed duties here. Patient 75462, commence your report."

"Spock, c'mon, that's no way to speak to a girl," Kirk said, obviously appalled at Spock's inconvenient lack of human warmth and decorum. "Especially this uh - lovely young woman, here." Kirk quirked one devious brow, and its arch seemed to toss a ray of light across his stunning blue eyes, like sea stones gleaming beneath tousled blue waters. "What's your name sweetheart?"

Chekov's muscles tautened as his Captain undauntedly charmed _his_ Lily in his presence. Without so much as a glance in his direction for permission, he cajoled her! Had the man no class or sense of decency? After all, Chekov had already deemed Lily as good as his. She was his charge, which was to be projected after the suffering the pair had endured in one another's company, a camaraderie not so easily frayed by an alluring tongue and impressive eyes.

Impaired by the Captain's heedless breach of territory, Chekov risked a glance at his companion, gauging a reaction he anticipated to be similar to that of the others Kirk had so easily swindled under his woven allurements.

But she merely relaxed in her intrepid repose, regardless of the fear pooling like fractured glass in the depths of her eyes. He noticed her milk-pale skin had not escaped the gray tinge of malnutrition and exhaustion, a collapse not so easily escaped when one has successfully cheated death.

He felt the pressure of a gentle squeeze saturate the expanse of his fingers, and a comforting warmth spread throughout his veins.

Lily released them in a moment to evade questioning eyes.

"My name is Lily, sir." she replied obediently.

"Ah, Lily. Pretty name for a pretty girl...you couldn't be any younger than nineteen, right?" Kirk persisted.

"Sixteen, actually," She corrected, staring bashfully at her wringing fingers, as if to escape the blame of her youth. "Newly turned."

Kirk blinked, clearly exasperated by this unforeseen answer. "Right. Well, uh…Spock, take it away, my friend."

"Thank you, Captain," Spock watched his friend dubiously after recieving an enthusing clout to the shoulder. "I believe I will."

Spock moved forward as Kirk dissipated into the backdrop of the rather unnerving scene. Chekov cleverly guised a victorious smile, and the cold seeped away from his numbed musings.

"Patient 75462, if you would be so kind as to share the account of your capture with us…"

"Of course sir."

A tremor shook her composure, and Chekov, in such close proximity to the sound of her voice, perceived the disturbance in her otherwise flawless poise. She was alone, save her newly justified friendship in a young navigator still amidst the age of his youthful, reckless nature. The commander was stiff and allowed no comfort in the sound of his voice or in the aura of his stance, and the doctor was a far cry from the desired beside manner, which would have been much needed console in the compromising situation she found herself in.

Under the circumstances, Chekov could do nothing more than discreetly reach for her hand, and curl the pads of his fingertips around the skeletal frames of hers. Her taut muscles were nearly alleviated of their austere stature, and she was given an encouraging recollection of home in his sympathetic gesticulation.

"It began a month ago, when my family had been travelling with my father, where he had been assigned a small, but fortunate placement aboard the USS Hoboken. We were merely in transit, leaving Federation headquarters, where we would be transported back to Earth in pods with many a family aboard the ship. Two days into the journey, we were attacked, and the ship was badly damaged, the engine nearly irreparable. Our engineer had been attempting his best to discover a way to mend the engines, and uh, get us out safely out of danger before the attacking starship opened fire again...."

"But he was too late, and the attackers successfully boarded the ship on escape pods, killing many of the first that crossed their path. A great many of the ship's inhabitants died, the majority being elders and very young children. The few left were gathered into the pods and transported back to the cargo hold, where we shivered and huddled close to one another for what seemed like days. Many died in the cargo hold as well, as there was no food or water…"

"About three days after our capture, an estimated half of us were unloaded on Planet Remus. It was there that I lost my young sister, Posy, the last of my family as my parents had been one of the first few slaughtered upon the attackers' sudden ambush. I tried to reach her, pull her back so she would stay with me, wherever I was meant to go, but in the scuffle I was knocked out, and I woke up days later on the planet Qo'noS. It was there that I became a slave to the attackers of the USS Hoboken, and a month later, I was transported to Delta Vega to resume my unspecified work there."

"Klingons…"Kirk murmured, and raked his fingers through flaxen strands of hair. Even Spock looked remotely distressed, whose unvarying equanimity had become routine for the impassive commander.

Only Bones looked unruffled, who had been standing behind Kirk throughout the entire account, and when Kirk discovered the doctor's aberrant calm, however stricken with shrouded fear and despair, he was, as was to be expected, outraged.

"Oh, and I suppose this does not concern you, Bones," Kirk remarked, seemingly casual, but a root of hysteria began to nudge its way into his words. "You're just the chief surgeon. Why should you be worried?"

"Damnit, Jim, I am worried. But this isn't news to me; I've known."

Kirk's indignation swelled hazardously. "You _knew_?! You knew and you didn't think to inform your commanding officers about this potential danger? For God's sake, I thought you were intelligent!"

"I'm a doctor, Jim, not an intelligence informant!" Bones rejoined impatiently.

"If you would be obliged to pardon my intrusion on your otherwise futile exchange of censure," Spock reminded them, now returned to his habitual equilibrium. "Ensign Chekov has not yet informed us of his own story."

"Comman'der?" Chekov questioned, uncertain.

"Your account would be most accommodating in our mission, if you would be so obliged as to share its use with us."

Chekov sighed and casually shrugged his fatigued shoulders, heavy with burdensome slumber and concern.

"Da, commander, but it is not much to tell," he warned, and Kirk mechanically returned to his seat, etches of worry darkening the creases in his skin. "I ws on the mission you and Keptin Quirk sent me. To eh, 'check out' the planet Remus, as you commanded. Well, I was exploring planet surface when I suddenly came upon a strange mineral, which looked to me wery much like a quartz. Out of the blue, I am come on from behind, and drop this mineral from my fingers, I did. I wake and find myself in cargo hold of Klingon wessel. I think they had preparing to transport me to the planet Qo'noS. I think, but can not know."

"After Lily was loaded - I apologize, Lily, for making your sounding like cattle...."he paused, holding up his hands defensively for a moment as Lily chuckled quietly to herself, nodding her approval.

"Anyway...I managed to escape enemy wessel simply by obserwing entering code for the door, which was, luckily, the same for metal cuffs. Lily and me, we made it out before the wessel took off. And now we are here, after you save us from becoming like little ice cubes on the glacier planet!"

"Fascinating observing skills, Ensign," Spock commented. "A logical choice in such a comprimising situation."

Kirk allowed an appreciative little smile for the effervescent Russian boy, and Chekov seemed to glow from within at the mark of approval from his beloved Captain.

"Thank you, Commander Spock. I have mark here, on my neck, to prove that I was ambushed, if you were having curiosity..."

Chekov bared the arch of his neck, revealing to the company two small concave holes, which had already begun to grow hard shells of protective skin over the diminutive marks. Bones leapt forward at the spark of duty that was permitted for him, and he examined the abrasions carefully as Spock and Kirk remained as hushed as the grave behind him, graced with solemnity and shadows of impending war.

"Tazers," Bones declared. "They tazered him."

Spock turned to Kirk, and the two exchanged a muted altercation over the matter. Bones did not dare venture into unchartered territory, and kept to himself during the lingering moments of private banter. But Chekov strained his ears, endeavoring to seize even a small fragment of the vital conversation, but failing miserably in his efforts. The Captain and Commander were practiced in the art of quiet exchanges of conversation, deftly managing the volumes of their voices so that it was virtually impossible to hear anything from where the crewmen lounged patienly, mere inches away.

"Anything?" Lily whispered to him, leaning into his ear.

"Nothing, I don't think…" He said, straining even more to overhear. "I believe they argue logic and unpredictability again. They do this often, so give no worry. They know what is that they are doing."

"I believe you, Pavel," she said, wilting slightly as she leaned back into the frame of her chair. "I am sorry, you know."

His heart thrilled as she delicately rested a frail, white-gray hand over his shoulder-blade, and the shiver reached into the marrow of his bones. He suddenly had the harrowing urge to convey his giddiness with a soft, vastly contented sigh.

"For uh - for what?" His brow gathered pryingly, after recovering from his disconcerting episode.

"For being so weak. I know I am…I'm being downright silly and I don't want to be. But I'm scared, and I don't know what to do," she motioned toward Spock, whose ruthless gaze pierced Kirk's concealed expression. "I know they are trying to help, but I can't help but feel afraid."

"Do not feel afraid, Lily," Chekov beseeched, stroking the small of her back compassionately. "I will not abandon you. I'll be 'ere, I give promise."

"I know you will," she said, smiling halfheartedly at him. "And I'm glad you're here with me, Pavel. It probably sounds foolish, I've only known you for five days but…I feel safer when I'm with you."

If there was anything Lily could have said to make his heart thrum and race in endless circles, that had been the one. He could scarcely draw breath without its trilling reverberations thumping restlessly against his flesh, the sensation almost jarring so that his head swam. Perhaps he was drowning, if it was at all plausible to drown in someone's words, but it felt so akin to the sensation of submerging beneath water, unable to breathe, and no way to escape the rising pressure of the clamorous waters beneath, pulling, tugging, wrenching harder until one couldn't think, couldn't breathe.

That was how he felt. It was silly, he knew, and Bones' words resounded in his head.

_You have a crush...._

He wanted to answer; he ached to tell her he felt the same way, that he melted into a pool of exuberant happiness every time even the slightest indication of a crooked smile would part her pale, cool lips. The vestige of a ghosting chuckle in her eyes, a quip in silhouettes of mirth traced into her wearied features.

It made his heart surge and sigh, his lungs burst and shout with laughter…he wished so desperately he could tell her everything.

But Bones was calling, that grating, demanding voice of his. Its callused roving crept into the soft caverns of his distant ears, and before Chekov could offer so much as a goodbye to his dear, dear friend, he was wrenched from his chair and hauled toward the automatic doors. Spock and Kirk were only meters before him, if only he could rouse his voice from its dormancy…

"Keptin Quirk, request permission to stay with patient, sir!"

"Request denied, Ensign," Spock replied mechanically. "It is only logical that all able crewmen remain on the bridge while in the process of locating the Klingon ship, and your capable mind is necessary under such hazardous circumstances."

"Aw, Spock. Give the kid a break, would you?" Kirk turned to Chekov, whose arm was beginning to lose feeling within Bones' iron vice grip. "Besides, Bones is kinda busy tending to the other vegetables around here. And Lily obviously needs human comfort, unlike you, Spock, who could live in solitude quite comfortably - in able to recover quicker, isn't that right Bones?"

"I'm not going to lie just to save myself the kid's potentially squandered time..." Bones grimaced, resigning to his fate. "It is scientifically proven that patients who receive regular visitors recover faster than those who do not."

"There's your logic, Spock," Kirk's brow danced frivolously with triumph, whilst Spock merely stared at Chekov with a disapproving eye. "Kirk out."

"You may report here after your relief." Spock decided, and both Kirk and the stick-stiff commander departed from the medical wing, leaving it in a heaving wave of sudden, blissful quiet. Chekov glanced at Lily, who was positively radiant with endearment as she met his eyes.

"You heard the man," Bones reminded him. "Well go on, kid! You're wasting bridge time down here."

"Da," Chekov replied, frowning moodily at Bones. "Grumpy man, you are…you are needing of happy pills."

Bones grumbled forebodingly and turned away from the vigorously lively boy, brooding over the fact that he was not permitted to beat the younger crewmen or take to drinking in order to escape their nauseating characteristics. But Chekov had already reported to the bridge as Bones' miserly monologue came to an ominous halt.

As the boy slid easily into his habitual station, petting the command center in his flamboyant manner, the doctor sat down by the window, uncovering the measureless expanse of space separated merely by a thick film of glass, contemplating the tranquility of cosmic space.

Back on the bridge, Chekov was humming happily to himself as he delicately dusted away any blemishes from his control center. Sulu, beside him, watched with a caution that suggested fear of contagions, and as Chekov at last heeded the questioning stare, he seemed to flinch, nearly unnoticeable to imperceptive eyes.

"_Dobrahye ootrah_, fellow nawigator," He said, entering his serial number to begin his duty.

"Yeah, uh," Sulu entered in his identification number. "Good morning to you, Ensign Chekov."

Sulu returned to his work soon enough without anymore distraction. With the exception of the ceaseless self-murmuring issuing from the oblivious Chekov next to him, the bridge was altogether quiet, undisturbed by impeding sound.

The quiet navigator soon discovered that the Russian's unprecedented enthusiasm was not at all infectious, and before long, began to wish secretly that it was.


	5. Part I: Lily's Garden

**CHAPTER FOUR**

_**LILY'S GARDEN**_

**A/N:**

**Hey guys! Here's the next part of the story! I'm surprised at how quickly I've been able to get these chapters out! I'm usually terrible at updating...Haha.**

**Anyway, thanks for all the wonderful feedback! I think this is the beginning of the adventures for the crew, so look out for the next chapter! Lots of action. :D**

**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**

**Lily and Posy belongs to me.**

**Chekov's Pronunciation of Lily:**

**Lee-lee.**

* * *

He couldn't tell how long he'd been there, gazing out into star-flecked darkness, pondering the depth of the cosmic, black perpetuity.

It looked as if it stretched long into the furlongs of forever, the only interruptions celestial bodies and the endless pinprick of ice-bright, slow shimmers along the way. Time seemed to lose its essence in space, racing one moment, almost as if it would never stop, and slow, halting the next, like steps of the drunkard moseying through the ink-darkness held hostage within forgotten alleyways. Only he knew the shadows because he had wandered in their silhouettes, figured out their most cryptic secrets.

When at last, she woke, he had been so thoroughly consumed by his thoughtful wanderings that, when she spoke, he had started violently and nearly toppled from his perch atop the window ledge. His eyes were glittering and liquid-soft as he turned to face her, and the dazedness that held them in their wake of astonishment pooled leisurely from his mindful reflections, the verve returning to their whimsical bloom of youth.

Lily, amidst his short spell of bemusement, stifled another guilty chuckle behind milk-pale hands, thin fingers, like strips of fleshy crepe paper, condemning her mirth to its rightful anonymity.

"I'm sorry," she released her mouth, and the smile she'd hoped to detain had flourished in its struggle for life. "It's that bad habit of mine again," she pauses, the smile disintegrating. "At least we know you are quite able to let your thoughts run away with you."

"Da, well, but perhaps I learn wigilance as bad habit of yours."

She patted her bedside with an inviting ashen hand, and Chekov leapt upon his designated placement, situating himself into a luxurious repose.

"How are you feeling? Better, da?"

"Yes, I think I am feeling better," she said, scrutinizing her own coverlet sheltered body, as if searching for a contradiction to her statement. "I am…a lot warmer now. Before, I would constantly get chills."

But unbeknownst to Lily, her assurance of excellent good health was, in light of her appearance, a contradiction. Her eyes were worn, shed of all light and animation, and still had not yet retained their vestige of dynamism that he knew was dormant in a dream she had not yet had, rest she had failed to find. Pale gold curls fell in bristled thickets around her shadowed features, looking as knotted and tousled and wild as ever.

The only improvement in her countenance was her complexion, its consistency bereft of its gray-worn pallor and returned to a peach-hued warmth.

"Do you ever miss Earth?" Lily asked suddenly, as the soft silence drew on.

Chekov averted his focused eyes away from her half-wrung hands, collected into a small bunch of fleshy fingers and weathered palms. When he had at last found her eyes amongst the stars, he found a longing there that could only be attributed to a loss of wanderlust, and a budding wish for home.

"Wery often," Chekov replied. "It can get lonely, living up here amongst lonely stars. I miss a lot of things for home. I miss sunset and sunrise," he paused, and found himself attempting to pick apart the starched white sheets. "What is it you are missing of, Lily?"

Her eyes drifted back into a state of wariness, and she smiled half-heartedly at his question. "Oh, so many things," she replied. "You know what is funny, I miss frilly dresses. I hardly wore the things when I was on Earth, probably because I never got around to putting one on. But now, I miss them. Ironic, isn't it, how that saying goes? You don't realize how good you have it until it's already gone."

She gave a small barking laugh, almost cynical in its biting texture. Chekov was surprised to see his temperate companion look so jaded, her face half-composed in a solemn shadow of regret. But as she continued to speak, her gaze softened again, and nostalgia brimmed over and seemed to ignite a sparkle that seeped even into her lashes.

He couldn't help but think of how lovely she looked, despite her windswept appearance, with that glimmer of hope like orbs of light in her eyes.

"On Earth, I used to go on walks in late spring, and I lived in Oregon, so people would have these pretty little flower gardens. They'd let me pick one flower each from them, as most of the neighbors were our friends, friends of my father and they'd let me. I'd make a bouquet each end of spring, and when the flowers would wilt, I would spread the petals over the backyard, and watch them float away in the coming summer breeze."

"What is it that your favorite flowers are?" Chekov asked, watching her fingertips trace circles into the fabric of the stiff coverlet.

He hoped to find some for her, if he ever had the chance…knowing their pesky little names would have been a great help in attaining them for her in the near future…

"I love orchids," she replied, voice ghostly and demure. "They are just so elegant, poised. Something about them makes perfection seem attainable, like it's not so far away as we think it is, you know?"

Chekov wanted to tell her he knew perfection, and felt the warmth of its vitality breathe and swiftly crash over him like white-crested waves breaking across a barren shore. His hand ached with the longing to take her hand and envelop it with his, just to feel how her skin felt, if it yielded to his grasp like crushed velvet, or was hard and unwavering like steel.

"You know, Pavel," the lingering specter of a grin returned to splash her features in a splay of revived color. "You're a really good listener. Most teenage boys are too busy with their motorcycles to pay much attention to the flowery musings of a girl."

"Ey, do not insult the motorcycles!" He warned teasingly, wagging an admonishing finger at her. Lily merely laughed, and Chekov joined in on her bubbling hilarity. "But nyet, it is not chore for me. I love to give listen to your speaking. It is like..listening to angels, da?"

Lily watched a flush creep into his cheeks beneath the artificial lights, and at first, had thought he had been merely fooling with her again. But the blush was inevitably authentic, the ruddy color unfurling like rose-red flower petals across his young, bright cheeks.

"How old are you, Pavel?"

"Sewenteen, and wery proud of it!"

"You don't act seventeen," she said thoughtfully, chewing her lip. "Well, except when you're talking about motorcycles, then you give it away!"

"I know, I know," he tilts his head, as if to display his knowledge of self-condemnation. "But I can hardly help it. It is I have need for speed and pretty girls. Especially you, Lily."

Lily clicked her tongue and shoved him playfully, and they shared another quiet laugh at his otherwise ridiculous statement. But both could not help but wonder, in the clandestine corners of their minds, if the demonstration of youthful necessities had a shred of truth in its asinine confession.

Behind his own self-conscious endeavors, Chekov desperately wanted to declare what he had said was not at all a jest, and though presented in that of an amusing manner, he had meant every lasting echo of insinuation that his words had secretly harbored.

He was young yet, and still had not an inkling as to the unfathomed depths of his heart, but he was aching to discover it. And he wanted Lily to be the first to unearth its potential with him.

But before he would voice his intentions, the intercom's computer-generated female voice echoed throughout the room.

_Ensign Chekov, please report to the transport command center._

"Da," he answered wearily, and looked to Lily. "I must report for duty, I suppose."

"I'll come with you," she insisted, and threw back her coverlets, allowing Chekov to assist her from her cot. As they made their way out of the medical wing and immersed themselves in the accustomed commotion of the corridors, Lily asked, "What do you think they are going to do?"

"If they are at the transport command center, then they are to beam directly onto nearby planet, which means they are intending to eh – to perhaps inwestigate the planet Remus, which I had been inwestigating afore my capture."

"The slave mines are located on Remus," Lily reminded him. "Does this mean they are going to find the slaves and attempt a rescue mission?"

"No, I do not think so," Chekov lead her into an opened turbolift, and jabbed impatiently at the buttons. "Commander Spock would definite say that it would be illogical to attempt a rescue mission. We are in this wulnerable place."

The elevator had zipped so quickly to its destination that Chekov had barely finished his sentence before the doors slid open, their slick, clear, white-dappled surface opening to reveal a less populated passage. Chekov took her hand and began to hasten through the small throngs of people that he passed along his way.

"Don't give worry, dear Lily, a rescue mission should be in the waiting cards," he assured her, allowing her fingers a buoyant constriction to elate her doused spirits. "I know that it is your sister is, nyet?"

"All I know is that she was transported to planet Remus, and I never saw her after that," Lily replied broodingly. "I hope she's alright. She's all I have left of my former life. I don't know what I'd do if I lost her too."

Her statement sent Chekov's thoughts whirling into a stroke of inspiration, and as they entered the command center for the transportation apparatus, he let go of her hand. The sudden dash of movement caught Bones' eye, who was standing nearby the Captain, attaining his orders for the duration of the investigation mission.

"Hey, what is she doing here?" He inquired petulantly, though the question was directed more toward Chekov than the girl herself.

"Bones, focus…" Kirk reached out and touched his shoulder, endeavoring to win back his full attentions.

"Focus? Don't tell me to focus, Jim. Damnit, I _am_ focused."

Kirk earned a hearty scowl from his old friend, and the Captain merely laughed, giving the doctor a substantial thud on the shoulder. "Lighten up, buddy. I mean, we've been friends all these years. Haven't you learned to trust me yet?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…"

"Alright…Bones, you're on standby with medical alert, in case someone gets hurt down there and we need your expertise. I want your best nurses available in light of a medical emergency…."

Chekov, sensing his orders were about to be determined in the process of mission preparation, risked a step forward and, in his unsuspecting state of mind, was pulled back before he could take his next step. Lily, whose eyes were alive now with surging, heaving concern, seemed to be battling a conflict, and it was apparent in her stormy, gray-tinged gaze, swells of fear and longing crashing and colliding and slipping away with new tides of dark-tilled dread.

"Lily, what is it-"

"Pavel, you can't actually be thinking of going!" She cried desperately, her hands crushed against his arms in efforts to confine him. "It's too dangerous, you shouldn't…you shouldn't go!"

Chekov laughed, shelving her distress with one glimpse of his unflustered smile. But the storm did not allay in her eyes, and no matter of laughs or careless glances could quell the panic swelling like heaving waters deep within her agonizingly fretful mind.

"Lily, my dear, dear girl, it is the duty of mine not only to Starfleet and the Enterprise, but to you as well. You understand that, don't you?"

Abashed at her unhinged display of trepidation, Lily languidly released the sinew of his long, spider-limb arms and allowed them to fall at her sides in defeat. Her teeth raked apprehensively over her bottom lip, and the rose-pink flesh blanched white from the relentless pressure. She gave a simple nod to acknowledge his words, but did nothing else, not even a glimmer of hope now in her agitated gaze.

"Please, be careful down there…you uh..you might be all I have left, in regards to family and friends..."

"I will, I give promise." He replied, and she shook her head violently.

"You can't promise something like that, Pavel. No one can promise something like that…"

She crossed her arms defiantly over her chest in modest disagreement and, feeling ashamed of the thoughtless berating she was subjecting her friend to, but too stubborn to admit defeat, she transfixed her stare upon the marble-pale pads of toes on her bare, and now uncomfortably chilled, feet.

"Well, I give promise anyway, and perhaps Got will watch over me and keep me safe from harm. Perhaps another will give hope for me too?"

"All I can do here is hope for your safety…I can't do anymore than that, and it scares me." She said, voice trembling now as she dug her long toes into the ground.

"Then that is what you do, no?" He said, edging forward in a hesitant step. "Don't worry, Lily. I will come back."

He reached his arms out half way, his heart throbbing and racing and bursting with the solitary wish to take her and embrace her before he had to leave. However, as seeds of uncertainty had begun to sew themselves into long, green stalks of doubt, he lowered them a little, and was about to return to his comfortable proximity from her slight figure, when she did the most unexpected gesture. The moment she realized what he had intended do as he paced hesitantly toward her, she fell into his arms, her face nestled into the planes of his chest, and her hands fasten around his middle.

Notes of faint, sweet musk and mint and even the surprising scent of jet fuel emanated like heat from his mustard-yellow uniform. She laughed to herself, committing them to the reservoirs of her beloved memories.

All Chekov could do in return was gently smooth the feral bushels of pale-gold curls, and he pressed his cheek against her head. He suddenly wondered if she could feel it, if she could hear it – his heart as it hammered joyfully against the contoured frames of his chest, through the paper-thin film of delicate flesh and the bulk of yellow fabric crushed against her face.

He mutedly hoped, a secret hope he did not wanted discovered, that she could.

She pulled away after a mere moment, and in his exasperation at the halted embrace, he blurted, "I will get your sister back for you."

At first, she was surprised. He measured the strands of astonishment that outlined the light expanse of taut flesh around her mouth and eyes, the curves of surprise creased into her forehead. But after deliberation, and the absorption of his words, she smiled so boisterously and so hopefully that she looked as if she were about to split a grin as ample as a jack-o-lantern's beam. "Thank you," she whispered, and it was as simple as that.

She nudged through a hidden compartment in her oversized shirt, and Chekov watched her curiously, wondering at first what she was doing until she unveiled a well-hidden picture from within the fathoms of the unknown pocket. Her hands closed gently over his palm, and she furled his fingers over the small picture, indicating she wanted him to keep it.

"This is Posy," she said as he opened his palm to reveal a bright-eyed little girl with pale-gold curls and a mirthful smile. "And for good luck. I know you will come back, Pavel. I'll be here, keeping hope for you."

He took her hand and squeezed it one last time before turning toward the small cluster of men that comprised the investigation mission. It was then that Bones, looking antagonistic and harsh as ever, addressed him.

"Cadet," Bones said gruffly.

"Da, doctor?"

"The Captain and his men are preparing to leave. You best get their attention before they go without you."

"But sir, how-"

"I had a sinking feeling you'd do something reckless and stupid to win her affections," Bones pursed his lips, and a contemplative frown grazed his features. "Just be careful, alright? I don't want to have to be stitching your pieces back together. I never had much patience for sewing. I mean, I can do it, but…I'm a doctor, not a seamstress."

"Thank you, doctor, for uplifting encouraging," Chekov grimaced at the less than optimistic words he had been afforded. He attempted to take them with a grain of salt, but was not too keen on receiving a backwards sign of good luck from the gruff, jaded doctor.

"Yeah, well, I always did have a way with words..." Bones gently shoved the kid forward a bit, encouraging him toward the captain. He then walked back to the control center to oversee their departure without another word.

'Keptin! Keptin!" Chekov bounded forward and, in his flamboyant request for attention, nearly stumbled over his coltish legs. Sulu, who stood amongst the departing company, grinned at his fellow navigator's display of youthful vigor.

"Yes, Chekov, what is it? Crack in the system, a short fuse, or maybe some theoretical physics problem that we will have to address before leaving?"

At first, Chekov had wondered if his Captain had been merely joking. But as he calculated the gravely somber expression, like wilted darkness over Kirk's young, angular brow, he doubted the likelihood of a joking gesture from his Captain under such circumstances and felt silly for even regarding them as such.

"Request permission for speak freely, sir!"

"Permission granted, Cadet."

"I wish to go in the nawigator Sulu's place!"

Spock, sensing his necessary expertise in the situation, stepped into the conversation. "Negative, Ensign. The statistical likelihood of your wounding or capture is critical. You are to remain here, where you are secure and not in the way of harm."

"Spock, I think he has a point," Kirk contradicted him. "He saved the girl from the ship. It may or not be logical for him to come, but it is the right thing to do."

"Thank you, Keptin!" Chekov declared victoriously. "Eh, no offense given, Commander Spock."

"I have not regarded such phrase as offensive, and therefore have no logical reason for offense."

"Sulu, you stay here and man the command center. Scotty is on standby in case of emergency," Kirk ordered and Sulu, who had not been entirely eager to find himself transported onto the surface of an alien planet anyway, nodded as he seated himself behind the controls.

"Captain, would it not be logical to first know the location of the mines before transporting ourselves to the base of the planet?" Spock inquired.

"Right, right…uh, Lily, would you mind coming over here a moment, please?" He invited a hand out for Lily to take and she meekly stepped before the Captain, while Spock, already equipped with intentions to perform a mind meld, took a step in front of her, so that he faced her squarely.

"Don't be alarmed. I have no objective of harming you." Spock assured her and Lily nodded, closing her eyes as he gingerly placed his long, thin fingers on her forehead.

Everyone surrounding them was quiet, not a chirp of sound or an exhalation of breath to be heard amongst the motionless company. Chekov had even gone so far as to hold his breath, anticipating Lily's reaction to such an invasive technique.

When Spock stepped away, Lily staggered a moment, looking as if she were about to cry as she gazed at the tall, intimidating commander. Spock simply nodded to Kirk, who gestured to Sulu.

"Lily!" Chekov cried as she stumbled against the wall.

"Go on, kid! I'll look after her," Bones prevented Chekov's dash to comfort her, and took the small girl into his stiff embrace, petting her head to comfort her.

"Energize." Kirk commanded.

And Chekov watched as the ship disappeared beneath his feet, and Lily dissipated into a cloud of blinding white light before his very eyes.


	6. Part I: You Promised

**CHAPTER FIVE**

_**YOU PROMISED**_

**A/N:**

**This isn't the end, I swear! This is just the beginning, actually. You'll see why. Like I said, I have a sequel in the works, so I am hoping to continue their story after this chapter in their lives is over.**

**Thanks for the support, guys! Always appreciated. :D**

**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**

**Lily and Posy belongs to me.**

* * *

The arrival on the dark, gloom-softened planet was a jarring one. Chekov felt every last bone in his measly little body vibrate with the force of the impact, but upon discovering himself the only splayed figure across the hard surface of the ink black ground, and his Commander kneeling to extend him a generous hand, he realized the foundation contact had not been as forceful as he'd thought. Perhaps, in the midst of what felt like nothingness, pure void of spirit, flesh and thoughts all wound into one tendril of irrevocable fear, he had crashed into the Vulcan's stone-hard body.

"You seem quite intent, Ensign, on establishing a higher statistical likelihood of your wounding than I would have thought."

"I am ungainly," Chekov hopped to his feet, coltish legs gelatinous and worthless beneath his maladjusted form; his voice slithered surreptitiously beneath the heavy, smoke-black air. "You are so wery…posed, you are."

Silence began to seep into each of them as they were swallowed wholly by predatory darkness. Spock's ears seemed to sharpen, bereft of his sight, as the small party ventured further into the murky depths of the planet. Chekov's throat commenced a self-annihilating constriction, as if a great hand had reached from beneath the sheath of darkness, sharp and cruel as cold metal, and locked his vulnerable neck in an inexorable grip. Images of Lily formed in his troubled mind, blooming like spring flowers, and her cheeks shone within the petals of pink and white. It would give him strength; and he started to feel a bit of the fear drain from his shaken limbs.

"For Lily, for Lily…this is for Lily, Chekov. You can do this…you are a Russian, after all...Russians are warriors…Russians are real man!"

Despite his detached pace, careful and calculated as one step fluidly transitioned into the next, and traditional Russian arrogance, Chekov was scared. He was a far cry from that of the cultural Slavic warrior, and no matter of self-proclamation or persuasion could avert the attention away from his undesirable stature, willow-like and insubstantial, nor the ostentatious clumsiness that stalked his every footfall. A bead of perspiration trickled in soft, hot trails down his creaseless forehead; he was scared, and there was no way to induce the ethnic valor of his people. He would have to earn it, just like they had done before him.

There was a bout of muffled movement ahead, and Spock instinctively paused in his tracks, brandishing a stiff arm to immobilize the thought-consumed boy beside him. Chekov sputtered as his chest struck the long, hard sinew of the Vulcan commander's motionless arm. It would not budge; something was terribly wrong.

Spock gestured to the shadowed boulders, like sentinels standing above their meager height, and the company scuttled behind them. Shuddering breaths emitted from each spooked figure, the most rapid coming from Chekov, whose gaze became transfixed on the black stretch of razor-thin path before their halted feet.

"What is it, Spock?" Kirk whispered, his hand reaching out to touch Spock's heaving shoulder. "What did you hear?"

"Was eet something big and scary with lots of teeth?" Chekov squeaked, and Kirk gave the ruffled boy a sharp kick in the shin.

"Oi!" He hissed, and clutched the afflicted area.

"Get a grip on yourself, Ensign, or I will have you returned to the ship and Ensign Sulu will take your place. Is that clear?"

For a moment, all Chekov could do was breathe. In, and out. His lungs were bursting with shame, and he had no inclination as to how he could go about emptying himself of the dishonorably craven fears.

Kirk reached out and seized the front of Chekov's suit. His breath was stifling and balmy against the boy's face, and Chekov could feel his resilience, thread-like, suspended over the precipice of doubt. How could he tell Lily he had failed, all because of his inability to face the darkness?

"Answer me, Chekov! I said is that clear?"

"Da, sir. Clear with day."

"Good."

Kirk's grip softened gradually, until his hands relinquished their hold and fell stagnant at his sides, fingers reaching for the abandoned phaser at his feet. He then issued a curt nod at Spock who, in his close proximity, detected the slight disturbance in the thick, black air. Spock returned the gesture.

"Footsteps, Captain, and if you address them now, you may percieve them as they approach."

They did as they were told, and inclined their ears toward the impending footsteps. Muffled, but approaching fast.

"How many, Spock?"

"I detect four separate pair, sir. And from the technique of pace and guttural form of speech, I would speculate quite confidently that they are, in fact, Klingon," Spock responded, and a droning sound issued from his phaser. "May I offer my logical suggestion, sir?"

"Kill them all before they release warnings to the others. That's a no-brainer."

"That's not what I was to propose."

"Then what do you propose?"

In a mere matter of moments, perhaps the same amount of time it took to breathe or blink a careless eye, Kirk had disposed himself before the tracks of the encroaching enemy. And the Captain had been all too willing to advocate Spock's loss of logical hesitation when it came to the capacity of human capability, which, in turn, invited the embrace of mortal trust.

Kirk exhaled loudly, giving a short-lived howl as he endeavored to attract the attention of the Klingon guards. "Hello, there! Nice night for a walk, isn't it?"

A slur of hoarse, brusque sounds erupted from the four distinctly separate throats of the clustered sentry. But before a scuffle could ensue, Chekov and Spock had already elicited the shots their captain had commanded of them. Chekov unfettered a feral war cry and trotted over to the foreign, pleated corpses, his step lively and weightless as air.

He leaned, tipping himself over the fallen aliens. "Take that you enemy scum!"

Victory was short-lived, and as Kirk, breathless, turned toward the direction the first batch of guards had come, fresh footfalls began to slither across the placid ground, causing it to shake, to quiver, as if with omnipresent dread of what was to come. Kirk's hand tethered Chekov's slighter, lithe arm.

"Listen here, Chekov. I need you to go up to mines and find the little girl. Take one other with you, the first one you see when you walk in. Wait for Spock, or my signal if he doesn't show. That is an order, and I need you to be brave and follow it. I know you're scared. So was I, when I was your age…scared of life, of what was coming for me, if anything was coming for me at all. But that's what it takes to be brave. Fear…" Kirk whipped his head around, the silhouette as plain as daylight amidst the unraveling murk. "Go…now!"

"I won' let ju down, sir!" Chekov cried, and turned from his Captain. In a matter of precious seconds, his arm was surrendered, phasers were set to destruct, and the encounter between armor and flesh began.

The sounds of biting steel and soulless machinery whirred behind him as he hastened away from the mechanical fray. His mind was disoriented; he couldn't remember what he was running from, or running for. A light was before him. Yellow, soft, not like the garish pretenses of worldly light. A ringing echoed from within the mines, so close that Chekov's breath quickened and his heart raced in anticipation. He gasped, he wheezed, and his fingers clenched harder around the white-brushed weapon in his hand. Too young, _tiotia_ had squawked, like a peacock, ravaged by Russian pride and flushed with its scarlet essence. But no, _mat_ countered, like wind tracing the hollow trees, he can do it.

_I know he can…I know he can, and he will._

It was what Chekov had needed most; a heartening reminder of maternal faith.

Light radiated from the yawning mouth of the mines, and the ringing of metal against solid rock solidified as they reality of the sound reached Chekov's dubious ears. He stood in the mouth for only a moment, gathering the crippled remains of his aptitude, and then lurched forward, uncertain, but determined in his newfound will.

It was an older man, wizened in age, but as the boy's eyes fell upon the creased, dust-painted face of the man, he found himself mistaken. He could not have been much older than his own Captain.

"Sir, sir…give listen to me," he lunged at the worker, his voice pained and stunned into submissive weakness by heaving breaths.

Chekov beseeched the man, and tore the pick from his meager hands before he'd been given even a moment to respond. The man, enraged by the boy's audacity, snarled and fastened his hands around the lithe expanse of pale-fleshed neck before him, defenseless beneath the crushing potential of his callused hands. Chekov clawed desperately at the disillusioned fingers, raking his nerve-bitten nails across battered skin. He wished, ardently now, that he had not been so careless as to pass the restless hours chewing away at priceless fingernails.

"I am here to help! Let me go, and I give promise I will get you out of here!"

In his desperation, Chekov grabbed hold of an ear and yanked as hard as he could. A shock coursed through him, and both of them cried out in pain, flummoxed to the ground.

Eyes set deep in crevices of flaccid skin widened with dazed bewilderment, and the craggy, hardened hands began to stretch, experimenting their use. Chekov coughed miserably and clutched at his windpipe, collapsing to his knees, parched for air. He drank it in voraciously, greedily, sucking in enormous gulps of breath and diluted strength.

The man began to blink and wag his head, as if emerging from a wraith-like dream. Death, or something equally dark and formidable, flittered from his countenance, and a spark of life reappeared in the hollows of his eyes.

" You're here to save me…" Mused the older man, who panted as he pulled himself to his feet. He scratched the sprouts of speckled gray and white that had begun to speckle his dark, haggard beard. "Why didn't you say so, kid?"

"I tried….you seemed intent on choking my neck first!" Chekov gurgled between breaths, and pulled out the picture nestled into the depths of his protective suit. "This girl…you have seen her, da?"

The man reached out and took the picture from the youth's trembling hand. He studied it for a moment, brow furrowed and darkened in the weak glow of light emitting from a torch-like apparatus which clung to the walls. Chekov, as he rose from his knees, squinted at the man's face, hoping for revelation, for any sign of recognition in the war-wearied expression.

"Yeah, I've seen her…little girl, ten years old. Blonde curls. Yep….seen her around."

"Please, sir. I need to find her…in exchange, for her safety, I will make sure yours."

The man nodded. "Of course, of course…she's down here more, usually. But we have to be careful. The Klingon guards are as vigilant as they are barbaric and cruel."

Chekov's thumb instinctively set his phaser to kill as the pair moved like shadows through the rock-hulled corridors. None of the surrounding prisoners even attempted to look their way, not even as the duo passed them in their conspicuous rush. It was almost as if they had penetrated reality and gone into a comatose world, trance-like in every movement, and every slow blink of an eye. A flash of pale-gold caught Chekov's vision as his mind wandered, and he skidded to an abrupt stop.

"Wait!" He cried to his companion, and pointed to a young girl, not yet lapsed into the progression of impending adolescence.

Her insipid blonde curls were dusted with soot and restless dirt, and her face smeared with ash and long-wasted tears. But it was monotonous, and no matter how many times Chekov attempted to wake her from her stupor, he failed. Try, and fail; the transgression was ominously repetitive. Rapid, dull-thudding footsteps began to splash like watery sound across the rocky ground. Time was preciously short.

With no hope of waking her and the enemy approaching, Chekov did the only thing he could think of under such dire circumstances. He took hold of her ear, in the precise spot upon which he had grabbed his first companion's, and pinched it with all of his remaining strength. Another shock, and the girl turned on him, eyes brimmed with insatiable rage and bloodlust, and she shrieked. Her fists stretched outwards, searching for malleable flesh, and pounded against the first surface they could reach. Little exasperated gasps of fury emitted from her mouth, and Chekov, the scapegoat of her mindless aggression, attempted to restrain her belligerent hands.

"Get off me, you slimy Klingon! Get off me, I said!"

"I am no Klingon! I am here to help!"

He grasped her face and held it still, and Posy looked up into his eyes, brighter than the low-thrumming glow of the lights that surrounded her. She gasped, and extended her small, dusty fingers to his features, tracing them in wide-eyed wonder.

"Starfleet," she whispered, wondering seeping into the very fibers of her skin. "You've come to save us, haven't you?"

"Da, but we only take two now..."

The Klingon guard appeared in the yellow-lit haze. A voice called out to them, from the entrance of the cave, calling for Chekov…and he could never mistake that voice, never in his life, even if he wanted to dilute its vital importance. He kneeled by Posy, taking her small hand into his. Eyes bright, lips fresh and pink as rose petals as they parted in falling crests of anguish, he spoke to her.

"Posy, tell Lily that I made my promise, if I do not get back alife. Tell her, please. You must give me this promise!"

Posy frowned as she searched the boy's eyes, looking for truth, for trust in their polished color. "How do you know my name, and Lily's-"

"I rescued her, from Delta Wega. Your sister, Posy…just you do it, please!"

"I will." She murmured, and Chekov closed his mouth, pursing his lips into a thin, determined line.

"Go," he shouted to his companion, nudging the girl toward him.

The Klingon guard brandished his jagged weapon.

Chekov's fingers searched for a good hold on the trigger, quaking, the fear coursing through his veins like toxins, unrelenting and chilling him to the very bone with a deathly silence. He dodged a stealthy blow from the guard, ducking beneath the blade as it was swept past his head with unnerving ease, and his phaser fell from his hand. A few yards from his dust-crushed figure, it settled into the tousled rumples of the ground, and Chekov felt like it was furlongs away. He fumbled through the dirt, and gasped as the blade came dangerously close to him. He rolled toward the static phaser; a moment's hesitation more would have cost him his neck.

For a few moments, Chekov was reminded of dancing, especially in historic Russian culture. Their sashays were terse, agile and swift, unlike that of the flowing western steps that won in favor of delicate nobility and aristocracy. It was the steps of a warrior, evident in every stroke, every bending turn. And he was there, in those barbaric days of war and conquest. He swayed toward the phaser one last time, beneath the wiry jaws of the monster above him, and his fingers successfully clutched the phaser. He had it!

But before Chekov could position the death-dealing blow that would end this hostile dance, he was obstructed in his venture.

A cry of agony, a rush of mortal pain. His throat seemed to spread as it awakened, and a primal lust for revenge seemed to harshly tug the trigger for him as the blood began to flow. The Klingon guard fell to the ground, dead, and raised the dust from its eternal rest, settling over the corpse-cold figure as if to cordially invite him into the shrouds of welcoming death.

He had to be brave. After all he had suffered, all he had gained throughout this mission, he couldn't die now. Not when Lily awaited him, her ashen features drawn with concern, like curtains over expectant window panes, awaiting the advent of summer rains to drain them of their parched desiccation. He would not abandon her, not now…not now.

Trembling fingers wrenched the blade from his side, and a thought reminded him, dully, that it was his own fingertips grazing the spreading bloom of gore trickling from his side. He was too weak to think, to move, to even breathe, and he listlessly watched the scarlet rivers crawl through tawny fissures in the ground. There was life in those rivers, life and love and hope...it was alive and human, but as he began to feel cold, lose the clarity of his memories to the fatal haze, he knew the life would be gone from them before long.

"Chekov!" Kirk's voice sounded so very far away, distanced by the limbo separating waking from reveries. "Where are you? Answer me!"

Chekov tried a sound, any sound to catch the approaching footsteps. It sounded like a gurgle, pathetic, but otherwise productive in their accomplishments. The footfalls halted, spontaneously, and a skeptical shuffling ensued.

"Oh, God…" Kirk whispered, daunted at first by the sight of a motionless body. But as he grew closer, he detected breathing, and laughed nervously, relieved by the sight. "Maybe you should listen to Spock sometimes, kid. He knows what he's talking about."

"I'm okay…" Chekov replied, panting as one wilted arm lifted from the ground and nudged his languid body upwards. Another arm repeated the same movement. "A device," he paused to take another breath, hissing as his side felt as if it would fall at its poorly sewn seams. "It is mind-numbing the slaves…the workers. It has to have control somewhere."

"Where, Chekov…what am I looking for?"

"A mechanism. It should have transmission dewice attached, and antennae."

A moment of silence as Kirk searched the premises for the designated apparatus. As Kirk located the device, which Chekov could only assume, as he laid there, struggling for each breath, two shots were fired, and the lights flickered off for a moment. Disoriented cries filled the mine, and Chekov watched as the surrounding miners dropped their tools and lunged for the throats of their nearby companions. Some began to beat one another with adamant fists, and others resorted to teeth, sinking their jaws into dust-ridden flesh.

Kirk gave a wild whistle, and the frays halted. Once the room was quiet once more, Kirk murmured something into his transmitter, hurriedly, his words quick and terse.

He then turned his attention to the multitude of slaves. Chekov simply waited, his face smashed into the tawny dirt, and closed his eyes. Gloom tried to overwhelm him, to take him…but Lily was there. She would not let them. She wouldn't let them take him from her just yet, not with her so far away, so helpless. He held on. Footsteps shuffled through the dirt, stinging his eyes from the exhumed dust.

"Chekov, kid…I'm beaming you back up to the Enterprise, and Bones will take care of you there. I'm staying behind, to get these guys out of here before they send in new guards," he paused, and Chekov felt a hand press against his filth-sifted curls. "You'll be alright. She'll be there when you get there. I promise."

The rest was a blur. He felt his body fade into white void, felt the nothingness fill him again, like water within glass, swirling and churning and dipping, until solid ground began to settle beneath him, and he was there. Bright lights filled his vision, and everything seemed consumed by a white miasma.

He heard Lily scream. It was an odd sound, in this netherworld. Her wraith-like hands, smoky and far away, enclosed around his cheeks. He felt them, but it was like a brush of lips, a clash of skin against skin. Arms pulled his lifeless body into a warm embrace, and he fell deep into the pockets of its console, drinking it in, harboring its secret warmth that no one else could share. Shaking…there was shaking, and he could feel it, all the way into the marrows of his bones.

She was crying. Lily was crying, and he knew it. He knew her tears, he knew her sorrows.

_Pavel, listen to me…Pavel, you have to stay. You promised you'd come back to me, that you'd stay!_

_He's dead, Lily. You can't bring him back…I'm- I'm so sorry. I am…sorry._

_No, he's not dead! He's not dead…please, you have to help him. _

_I can't wake the dead. I'm a doctor, not a magician!_

_You have to save him! Please! He's not dead. He's not dead!_

_Lily – Lily…stop it! He's gone, girl, gone! _

_You promised, Pavel. You promised you'd come back to me. You promised you'd stay!_

_You promised…_

The world began to fray, threads of life and tears and sorrow unraveling from their tiered magnificence. Pearl-white, clouds with burnished whorls began to encroach on the darkness that impeded his vision, and he wanted to reach for their beauty, harness its loveliness so that he could savor it for the rest of his life. His eyes fluttered, closing, opening, and he watched Lily's tear-stroked face disappear in a blur of pearls and white, blinding light.


	7. Part I: Awake

**CHAPTER SIX**

_**AWAKE**_

**A/N:**

**Hey guys! Like I promised (pun not intended, if you remember the title of the previous chapter...hahha), that was not the end of the story! Far from it, my dear, dear readers. I had some of you going though, didn't I? Muahha. ;D**

**Anyway, this is just the beginning of Chekov and Lily's story.**

**I hope you'll enjoy it.**

**Thanks for the unending support and reviews! From all of you!  
It is much appreciated, and always accepted.**

**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**

**Lily and Posy belongs to me.**

* * *

If there was one thing Chekov was certain of when he'd roused from his netherworld, it was that he felt detached. As if someone had severed his strings from their roots deep within the fathoms of the waking world, or perhaps rendered his soul in two, or no soul at all.

There was something strangely disconnected about his blurred surroundings as his eyes fluttered open, whisper-thin, the white lights boring into a drug-ravaged brain. If he had known such pain had existed beneath the threads of his feeling body, he would not have felt so utterly ravaged by fear, knowing he couldn't feel, couldn't think.

But before the boy could initiate enough confusion to induce a panic attack, there was softness. A surreal feather-swept touch that woke the very foundations of his quiescent rationality. His chest heaved, breath shallow as the pooling bewilderment in his eyes, with the rising and falling of his heart's erratic beating. A gentle breeze seemed to fan the burning haze that held hostage his ability to think, to observe.

Distortion released its vice hold, and slowly, but surely, a mottled silhouette drowned his clouded vision until there was nothing he could see but that watery mirage.

_You're awake...Oh, thank God you're awake! _

_Pavel, speak to me. Please. Let me know you're alright. _

_Please, I beg of you. Answer me._

Gears began to turn, process sight and sound. The words were far away, mangled by bemusement and the haze, but accessible to his dozing brain nonetheless. Lily. There she was, that sparkle of pale gold and white, filling him with whispers and prayers as she beseeched him to wake. Gradually, he began to grasp the capability to trace the familiar planes of prematurely aged, weary eyes. Blue as they were, they did not glisten like sheer waters or raindrops held in curtains of fresh sunlight. A soggy smile ignited her features, laced in tears, but alive like a candle held to a dismal gray-washed painting.

_Pavel, please. I know it is hard…you have almost died, I could only imagine how frightened you must be. But you must answer me. You must._

_Please…_

_Please try._

"Alright, but…only…only for you, Lily." He said, and though his voice was weak and hindered by little use, she gave a strangled sound, something like a shriek of pure, unbridled elation.

Her arms were flung around his neck, though with difficulty, it did not delay their persistence. And though he was weak and still mildly disoriented, he could not be any happier to have the weary-eyed angel weeping so violently into his slight shoulder as she was.

He lifted a hand and patted the tangled whorls of her sallow gold hair, which tickled the slope of his nose and the tips of his lowered lashes.

"There, there dear Lily, why do you cry like this? I am live, no?"

She wrenched herself back, as if only just realizing her affectionate display. At first, Chekov was immensely taken aback by her ostensible action of self-doubt, but as her expression drew into focus, and her eyes flashed, his assumption faded into the background of his dull-lit thoughts.

"You stupid boy…I can't…you just make me so angry with your Russian arrogance. Do you realize that you almost died?! Bones was about to send you to the morgue, and the Captain had to convince him you were still alive when he came back!"

She paused, wiping the corners of her tear-stained eyes. In her current state of mind, he couldn't conjecture if they were born of anger…or of newly relieved concern.

"I was sure you were gone after that; you didn't show any signs of life for three days, just lying there, like a marble statue you were so pale! And now, now when I had lost all hope that you were never coming back…now you come back! That is just like you, Pavel, and I don't like it at all!"

He tried to reach for her hand, but before he could fully grasp the wilted, white fingers, she snatched it away, glowering down at his pleading expression with the unparalleled ferocity of a wolverine.

When she evaded his endeavors to comfort her again, he crossed his arms across his meager chest and returned her indignant glare. If one had dared venture into Sickbay at that very moment, they would have wondered, idly, if they had happened upon the heated, yet juvenile argument between a pair of incensed toddlers.

"You are wery ungrateful, you are! I go down there for your sister, and here you have nerwe to be angery at me!" He huffed, visibly annoyed, brow furrowed over narrowed eyes. "I had courage of Alexander the Great, like Keptin Quirk! Strong and wigilant!"

He turned his resentful eyes on her. "And you, hurting the Russian pride! You dizzyingly confusing _devushka_!"

He commenced a tirade in Russian, expelling his fury into foreign phrase that Lily could not understand, and perplexed her completely. Her frustration began to melt at the hilarity of his expressions, the tireless motions of his eccentric hand gestures, and before long, she had broken into a fit of laughter, Chekov still amidst his hysterical raving in his native tongue.

She caught one of his hands, soothed out the raging convulsions that erupted throughout his veins, and watched the burning flare within his eyes grow placid, smooth as the glass-soft surface of a mirror, reflective and consoled.

"You, Pavel, make it so very hard for me to stay mad at you." She admitted, stroking his hand once before allowing its release.

Chekov mourned the loss of her feminine warmth, her tantalizing proximity as she shifted away from him, settling into the comfort of her visitor's chair, where she rested a thin elbow on her knee and regarded him with inquiring, mist-frosted eyes.

In an attempt to win back the remains of her distant favor, he remarked, "I try the hardest, my _podruga_, to make you happy. It is of Russian way, to be good, and no mercy to enemies. Rescuing your sister seemed mighty good way to eh…show custom. Speaking that, where is she?"

Lily offered him an appreciative smile in return for his good deed, and, as she heaved a drowsy sigh, peeled back Chekov's ruffled white sheets, which were stiff with fresh starch.

"Posy is in Recovery, alive, thanks to you. She was starving and very tired, but she will live," she paused, raking her teeth over hesitant lips as reluctant fingers reached for the hem of his unsullied white shirt. "I don't know how I can ever repay you for what you did for her."

She drifted into unmarked silence as she removed the bandage from his side, eyes transfixed upon her task, almost nervously, uncertain. He watched her, desperately restraining the urge to confess to her he knew a way, he knew the way she could repay him, if only she consented to its terms. Such an impersonal line of contemplation made him resentful of his diffidence when it came to the unchartered territory of female interaction and reserve. In his mindful wanderings, he began to wish he had the ability to mind-meld, like Commander Spock.

How perfectly delightful it would be, he mused, to have the capability to read her very thoughts. Uncensored, and untouched by human perception except her own.

"This might sting a little," she warned, poising to gently press a moistened, downy cloth against the vulnerable wound.

He gasped, and out of pure instinct, grabbed a quick hold on her wrist as she continued the tentative, careful caresses. She pulled an awkward smile, and said, "I did warn you. I hope it doesn't hurt too bad."

"Nothing a Slavic warrior of me cannot handle," he joked, and she laughed a little, casting him hopeful glances beneath sheepish lashes.

"Slavic warrior, huh? And how is the Slavic warrior feeling today?" She teased, folding the blood-stained cloth to a cleaner patch of white.

"Sleepy, da…wery sleepy….but, living, da? So I cannot complain…especially what with such pretty attending nurse…"

She flushed a little, and attempted to hide her rose-pink cheeks. "You uh…you must be talking about Nurse Chapel," she mused quietly. "She's been in here a few times too."

"Of course not. I am talking for you." He countered, and they exchange caution-sheathed glances, glimpses of hooded affection in each other's eyes.

It was serendipitous, perhaps, that both were thinking the exact same thing, that if only they knew what was on each others' minds.

"You know, some things never change, Pavel…"She shook her head and laughed, looking almost whimsical in the way that she tilted her head, inquiring, but demure.

"Things newer change…Lily?"

"Yeah…you cheat death, and yet you still find a way to make me laugh." She shot him a teasing grin, and Chekov caught it, reciprocating its infectiousness with a wink.

"I eh…I like to make your laugh come, Lily."

His statement was all but teasing.

Lily rose from her perch upon the visitor's chair to dispose of the soiled cloth and retrieve a fresh supply of gauze, hardly reacting to the boy's previous statement with the exception of an insistent flush of her thin, pale cheeks.

Chekov sighed longingly and tried to quell his own burning cheeks as Lily ransacked an unassuming drawer, who was still unfamiliar with Bones' inept method of organization. He wished he could get out of his debilitating cot and stretch his restless legs. Such wistful thinking was worthless, as even the slightest twitch of movement caused indescribable pain. Almost agony, but not quite, he surmised.

"Where is Doctor McCoy?" He asked, trying to purge all thoughts of freedom from his head.

"Oh, he's attending to some of the slaves Kirk had saved before beaming back aboard. A lot of them were hurt, beaten and starved mostly…but some had lacerations, or something like that…Bones had told me all about it, but he might as well had been speaking a foreign language, because I didn't know what he was talking about…"

Chekov wanted to tell her what lacerations were. In fact, it was an urge so powerful, he had to bit his tongue to keep it raveled within his mouth, like a ball of string, lodged tight within his throat. He would choke on it, he knew, if he didn't say it aloud, but he wanted to spare poor Lily of his pompous Slavic arrogance.

If only for once.

"Eh…"He cleared his throat, distracting himself with another query. "Who is eh…manning my post?"

"Scotty," she smiled, returning to her place beside him, a severely wrapped package in hand. "It was actually quite funny, how he said it. He claimed that it was brave of the little Rushie, to save the wee little lassie like he had. That was how he volunteered…."

Her voice tapered off as she removed a thick wheel of gauze. "I agree with him, Pavel. It was very brave of you, if only a little foolish as well."

"'Ey…I give a promeese, I did. And once a Russian gives a promise, he bound until he is done it."

"I'll bet they do, Pavel," she chuckled, taking only a moment to cast him a teasing look. "I'll bet they do."

It was as she slathered a glistening sheen of ointment over his yawning gash that Chekov impulsively wrenched her fragile hand into his. The tube of ointment slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor in its slumped, wrinkle shape, and Lily watched him warily, pondering the stability of his mental health before she took into consideration his expression. It was wilted and frail, like glass, threatening to break at any uncalculated moment.

Her grip, tautened, began to fray at its skeptical edges, and it softened, finally, as she gently squeezed his hand from within the caverns of flesh that surrounded and choked its dexterity. He, at last, let go, and looked at her with apologetic eyes.

"It's okay, you're fine…I know it hurts." She assured him, and the apology was swept away, little remnants of its existence still present in the troubled, colored waters. But wavering, and slowly melting away.

"Have you ah….seen Posy in last hours?" He asked weakly as she gingerly applied the last of the ointment to his severed flesh.

"I saw her a while ago, maybe two hours, before I had to slip away to take care of you," she smiled, indicating her lack of obligation. "Bones taught me, you know. How to tend to wounds like this. I was clueless before; I'm certainly no doctor, but now…now I can dress wounds. He said it was all in his plan to avoid you…that way he could tend to more important, less foolish patients."

Chekov laughed gawkily, a trembling act of mirth that was half hysterical from the surges of pain that left him nearly breathless. "Eet soun's joost like someteeng ze doctor would say, act'ua'lly," he paused, and deliberated the worn lines, like crevices, beneath her shadow-brushed eyes, the pallor of her milk-white skin.

"Are you okay, Lily? You look so wery…tired."

"I'm fine, Pavel," she responded mechanically, her mind absent from conversation as she reached for the unfastened gauze. "I am only worried about you, for now. You're my first and only patient, you know. If you somehow slip into a coma or something like that, how's that going to look on my medical record?"

She smiled a little at her self-mockery, but Chekov was much too enthralled by their proximity to deem her banter vital to his current situation. He had arched his back, and had done so despite the nearly insufferable pain, so that she could reach around him and apply the gauze properly.

Bones, he knew, would not tolerate slipshod application, and he wanted to help her…even if it meant hurting for just a little while.

It was as she swathed the wound with the first layer that he caught the first notes of her womanly allure. A scent wafted from the curling threads of her hair, something akin to earthly orange blossoms and lily petals, soft and sweet and captivating his vulnerable senses.

The supple aroma filled him, from the tips of his toes to the pinnacle of his own winding tendrils of hair, and he couldn't avoid the inevitable enticement that ensued after his awareness of her delicate scent.

She finished applying the gauze, hands shaking, and her eyes drifted toward his beneath her dark blonde lashes, hooded within clandestine intentions.

If in only the slightest tinge of movement, she tipped her small body toward him, a precarious, but an unmistakably discernible movement closer to him. His breath hitched, and it seemed impeded by the swelling knot of nerves forming in his pale throat. He moved closer, reciprocating her unambiguously wanton yearning, but carefully, gauging her reaction, hopeful but tentative in case of any miscommunication. Lips, like rose petals, soft flesh pink and lithe, parted as she searched his eyes, unearthing only fear and restraint.

In only a moment, he watched her yank herself away, looking mutilated by doubtless humiliation and grief. Hurried movements followed, in which she secured the abandoned gauze with a strip of medical tape, gently tugged the hem of his shirt over his exposed stomach, and rose hastily from her visitor's chair without risking another glance back at him.

She disposed of the medical tape.

Chekov was nearly despondent.

"Lily, what is wrong…"

"I'm sorry, I really am…" She paused, searching for something. "I've just uh…gotta go. Gotta go back to Recovery, for Posy."

She found it splayed across the countertops but, before Chekov could catch even a glimpse of it, she pocketed it deep within the lint-ridden compartments of her overcoat.

"Lily, please…tell me." He ventured, but she merely ignored him.

"I have to go see my sister," she said, and avoided his bright, searching eyes. "She's probably awake now, waiting for me."

"Lily, please…" He swallowed, clenching his fists. "Please, stay with me."

At last, she looked back at him, her eyes swimming, ghostly with an encroaching mist crawling in their underlying discretions. It was only a moment of suspension, straying into his darkened room, the automatic door sliding open to reveal the bustle of the outside corridor.

"I'm alright, Pavel," she assured him, although she looked uncertain of her answer. "It's just…Posy needs me too. I'll be back later…with books, okay? So you won't get too bored while I'm away."

He watched her walk out of the room, looking crushed.

And as she moved out of the way of a cluster of crewmen as they passed her, she bowed her head, and Chekov saw her wipe furiously at her eyes.

She was _crying_.


	8. Part I: Flesh Wound

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

_**FLESH WOUND**_

**A/N:**

**Here we go with chapter seven! I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Even though it took me like...four hours to write. xD**

**Anywaaaaaay.**

**Thanks for the unending support and reviews! From all of you!  
It is much appreciated, and always accepted.**

**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**

**Lily and Posy belongs to me.**

* * *

Something was most certainly off kilter.

Chekov was not exactly the most observant soul when it came to the sentiments of his fellow crewmen, especially when it came to the inner workings of Lieutenant Uhura. But he could detect Lily's world tilted off its axis; it was pushing for destruction, or pushing for nothing at all.

He was at least assured in some regards. She had returned with a data slate and shifted it over the end table next to his bed, but the ghost of her presence had grown cold, disintegrated into the common air. She had come, just as she said she would, just as she'd promised. But it was a hollow promise, and he was sure she knew it, as she did not stay for him to wake, and the lingering shadow of doubt crawled over his restless head. Was she angry? Was she afraid? He idly wandered off into self-deprecating thoughts, wondering what he could have said, what he had done. Surely, no girl simply detached her entire being from a certain room without reason.

With nothing to do but wait and process the idea of having to commit to such a tediously uneventful act, Chekov instantly grew bored. Like a tiny flower, the bloom grew larger and thicker, until it devoured half of his attention span. Then three-quarters. Suddenly, Chekov was humming an old lullaby his mamin used to sing to him when he lay like a restless china doll in his crib, tossing and turning. She would grow worried for her precious, fragile little gift, and would cosset him shamelessly. He began to remember the willowy sound of his mamin's voice, how soft and soothing it was; her voice wept and whispered, and he always used to wonder if that was how the weeping willows sang – sounding so melancholy in their ageless songs. He could remember, still, how much it felt like the wind splaying its ethereal fingers across the shallow depths of his newborn soul. The very thought of his mamin cultivated a seed of nostalgia in his stomach, and he clutched aimlessly at the growing weed.

Boredom, he duly noted, was a dangerous fiend to encounter under such lonely circumstances.

Chekov decided to take to the data slate Lily had brought for him, and had to restrain a laugh when he accessed the archives which she had chosen for him. The history of the Ducati, and of course, the god of all two-wheeled specimens, the Harley Davidson. He then ventured into new territory, and found himself very cozy in the records of theoretical physics that he found there. His stylus grazed the glowing surface of the slate, and his gaze drifted toward the windows, searching for coiled tufts of milk-blonde hair and aged, wizened eyes.

The very thought of Lily made his lips droop in the form of a downcast pout. How utterly complex girls were! Why, they made calculus look like a stroll through a meanderer's garden, all wrapped up in the sweet smells of dried ink and three hour-old coffee sitting stagnant in one's old studying mug.

In fact, he would rather have to take his most trying subject three times over than have to take Feminine Linguistics 101. If there ever was such a class, Chekov would be the first to spit on its door, and be proud to watch the rolling gobs of his solid rejection tear asunder all hopes of a male foot ever walking through its forbidden foyer. It would never live to see its first obliterating lecture!

Chekov attempted to reign in his runaway thinking. He knew it was quite cruel of him to be thinking of his companion in such unkind ways, but he could hardly prevent his masculine pride from reacting to such impudent feminine wiles the way it did. It had its own agenda and its own set of hormones to eject, and therefore his mind had no control. He was a prisoner to his own rapidly growing, but hardly maturing teenage body. The thought nearly frightened him out of his wits.

He never thought he'd be so very relieved to see Bones walk in, equipped with his tricorder. The boy only just realized the dull, monotonous thud that resounded behind his drastically coiled head, and watched Bones with a look of dumbfounded amazement as he analyzed the biofunction monitor's steady vitality readings. A grunt of satisfaction escaped Bones' pursed, grim-set lips, and he traced Chekov's wilted outline with the tricorder without even a hint of a word to trace the lazy creases surrounding his dormant mouth.

Chekov decided to strike up a casual, and an otherwise sociably intended, conversation.

"Dr. McCoy, where is Lily?" He inquired softly.

Bones' scowl deepened, and his brow almost looked black and gaunt in its current displeased stature.

"Not here," he responded, his tone choked with severity. "She asked if I could look after you for a few days. The poor girl looked so desperate and pathetic I couldn't refuse her. What did you say to her, huh? She looked like she was about ready to fill a lake in Texas, crying like that."

"She was crying? You did not ask what is wrong?"

"Figured it was a private manner. And seeing as I have more important things to do like, oh, I don't know, save lives, I thought I'd leave the teenage angst to the children and deal with the big kid stuff instead," he muttered wryly, reaching for a new tape of gauze as he tended to the gauze enveloping what little there was of Chekov's meager figure.

"You need shore leave, doctor," Chekov grumbled irritably, but gasped as the wiry-handed doctor began slathering his side in ointment, and not in the delicate, careful manner that Lily had been cautious to use when doing so before. "Ou'ech! That makes hurt a lot!"

"Of course it hurts. Human tissue has nerve endings, kid, and when those little nerves are disturbed, your brain responds by sending out little pain neurons. Luckily for you," Bones paused, looking over the afflicted area with a critical eye. "You're healing up fast. It wasn't as deep as you thought."

"It sure felt like it." Chekov whimpered, pulling the hem of his shirt over his head as Bones motioned for him to remove it.

"Stop your whining, I'm trying to save your skin from gangrene…"

"Da, sir, but only on terms of you telling Lily to come back 'here right when you get back to the Sick Bay!"

Bones was, unsurprisingly, more efficient than Lily, Chekov noticed. In a matter of what seemed like mere seconds to Chekov, the doctor had already packed away his remaining unsoiled tools, disposed of the old gauze. He threw the tattered yellow shirt back to the reposed boy and rose from his spot beside the cot, looking highly amused.

"Why don't you tell her yourself?" He teased. "You'll be out in two days. You can wait till then; besides, a little boredom is good for a growing sprout like you. Teach you some discipline."

Bones walked out of the room without another word, simpering as Chekov looked positively terrified at the thought of being caged, like an animal, cold and alone in the highly sterilized Sickbay. The boy winced as he moved too rapidly in his horrified bewilderment.

"You are cruel man! A human like me needs interacting!"

A pause, and the automatic door slid open without another word from the mirthless doctor. Chekov was alone again, but there was hardly a thought in his mind of giving up.

"I heard in Russia that boredom kills a man! What will you do with unexplained death on your hands, doctor?!"

No reply. Just echoes, and he began to wonder if the very walls were chuckling behind their painted facades. He stared at the door, hoping for a joke, a laugh…something human to convince him that Bones was merely joking and would come back with his Lily. Anything would do…he'd even accept Spock's stolid expression at such a desperate time as this.

But there was nothing. And soon, Chekov accepted his silent fate and curled in on himself, pouting into his starched coverlet like a toddler, bereft of his wooden blocks and shiny, shiny toys.

* * *

Before then, Chekov had never realized how painful the number forty eight could be.

For two days, he lay drooling as he stared blankly at the wall, searching for a cause in its unblemished vestige, for anything. A sign of brain activity, a slur of speech as a reaction to the stimulus at hand. In fact, Chekov had responded to less wit-inspiring stimuli before, such as a snowflake drifting from a listless, black-churned sky and landing on his nose, prickling the reddened skin with a frost-white chill. If there was any brain left at all, Chekov was certain it would have the ability to do something, and he attempted to salvage what little was left of its precious power by reading the articles on theoretical physics and motorcycles that Lily had brought for him. Even if they merely reminded him that she wasn't there.

But after two days, two agonizingly long cycles of sun, moon and stars, he was prepared to return to his duties again. Bones waltzed in with Commander Spock following mechanically behind, looking as rigorously austere as he ever had before. Or perhaps, Chekov mused, he was so unused to seeing another living, breathing mortal being that he'd forgotten entirely the structure of Spock's unsmiling face. If he was not so inclined to maintain his otherwise spotless sexual reputation, Chekov would have eagerly leapt from his cot, stitches be damned, and kiss the summits of his Commander's spotlessly flawless cheeks. He could only imagine the reaction he would have gauged for such a witless act.

It was a simply procedure, in which Bones demonstrated Chekov's stable vital signs on the biofunction monitor and consistently average temperature on the tricorder. Spock remained languid throughout the procedure, moving only as Bones concluded his medical assessment and required a viable response from his commanding officer.

"Your evidence is sound, Dr. McCoy, and I have no reason to doubt your expertise. However, I must inquire after the plausible state of the Ensign's wound when under the influence of anxieties common within the bridge environment."

"He should be fine, Commander, as long as he isn't intent on riding in any rodeos any time soon."

"Fascinating," Spock cocked his head abruptly to the side. "The human conditions of hilarity always seem to escape me. Perhaps you would be so kind as to impart your secrets to me, on the occasion that we are utterly bereft of all duty and require nothing else but tedium to endure."

"It'll be a regular tea party, Commander. I can't wait," Bones muttered dryly.

"Amusing," replied Spock, as the hint of an indecisive smile began to splay ashy whorls across his hollow expression. "I believe that is the phrase?"

"Da, I that is wery much correct, Commander," Chekov intervened, and Spock cast him a questioning look, almost as if he'd entirely forgotten the young Ensign's presence.

"Is the kid fit for duty or not?"

"Yes, doctor. I believe the Ensign is fully capable of resuming his prior duties, and will report to his station at 1030 hours. Is that understood, Ensign Chekov?"

"Aye, Commander."

"You shall relieve Ensign Scott upon your arrival."

And that was all that was articulated by the tall, sinuous Commander. He pivoted fluidly on his heel and seemed to glide from the room, suspended upon a cloud of confidence and alien allure that Chekov could only dream of attaining. The boy knew he was not manufactured for grace, merely the awkward flailing and reckless, coltish sprints down bustling corridors.

"You heard the man," Bones interrupted the white silence. "You've got fifteen minutes to mentally prepare yourself for duty."

"But…but.."

"There are no but's in Starfleet kid. Just ands. And a whole lotta 'yessirs'," Bones sighed wearily, looking suddenly older and more tired as the seconds stretched on, seeming to stretch the entirety of his short life with it. He looked jaded, and roughened by the unfairness of reality, but it did not take long for him to regain composure.

Chekov watched the doctor leave without another word, and then followed both his commander officer's and medical officer's example by leaving too. It was a painful experience at first, acclimating to the forgotten practice of walking and the art of evasion. Dodging eagerly unaware footsteps proved to be quite the difficulty when faced with the challenge of having a sore wound smarting in response to rash movement, and the boy couldn't have been more elated to reach the bridge if he'd even attempted to attain it purposefully. As soon as he shuffled into the room, Scotty seemed to leap from his post, looking just as relieved as Chekov, if not more.

A small interaction was exchanged between engineer and navigator. A smile, a smart thud on the back, a grimace, and finally, a departure on behalf of the liberated Scotsman. Sulu restrained a dignified smirk as Chekov slid painfully into the navigator's chair.

"You alright, Chekov?" Sulu asked casually, casting sidelong glances at his fellow helmsman.

"I could feel better," Chekov replied darkly, and entered his access code into the system's computer.

"Welcome back, Ensign Chekov….we're lucky you're here, actually. Scotty was going stir crazy; it's just not his thing, being stuck here in the bridge all day…." Kirk absently spoke to the boy as he traced his finger lightly over the controls of the command chair. "Now, uh - Chekov enter the course coordinates for Federation headquarters. Mr. Sulu, maintain impulse drive."

"Yes, sir." Sulu replied, and his fingers danced over the keys, fleeting, pausing only as his hand drifted over the control mechanism, slowly motivating the ship forward.

Chekov's heart drooped, sinking into the unfathomed grottos of his stomach.

Lily would be gone in a matter of mere hours.

* * *

To Chekov, the hours only seemed to grow shorter. They had abandoned, altogether, their ability to simply delay their purpose and hobble determinedly onward. As soon as he had ventured his first step into the methodical activities and occupations of the starship, time seemed to mend its ill-spent hours all too quickly. Five hours of duty passed quickly, and before Chekov had become aware of the time, he was being relieved by a less incapacitated officer.

As ordered, he began the course to return to sickbay, trudging dejectedly into a turbolift. He merely watched the doors swallow the commotion and clamor of the corridors, and he was doused in a gushing reign of silvery quiet. Nothing but the whir of the turbolift surrounded him, and the dizzying, toppling shuffles of his thoughts as they sorted themselves into categories. One seemed to plague him incessantly.

Where was Lily, anyway? The query would not move on to its rightful compartment. It plagued him like a relentless malady, churning his stomach until it withered from rot, turning his head around and around until his head swam and dipped sickeningly. Had she decided to take a shuttlecraft for the duration of the course for Federation headquarters? Was that even allowed? In his mild hysteria, he reached for the turbolift control pad, pressing it with a force that, if it had been delicate, would have shattered the meager little button with his smothering, insistent fingers.

As the turbolift's doors opened, Chekov rerouted his sense of direction, and headed directly for Recovery. He would deal with a cantankerous Doctor Bones later, and even a frighteningly accusatory Spock as well. He needed to talk to her. It wasn't a want, a mere passing fancy, a whim to entertain frail little wishes for summer and springtime. It was a need, and like all needs…this necessity was required for immediate fulfillment.

The scene in the Recovery room was a tranquil one. All were asleep, save one, a glass-fragile figure that sat on the thin ledge of the vast, opened window and stared out into the star-kissed vacuity of all-consuming space. It was calming, reaching into such darkness to find light, weakened and shallow, but still alive and pulsating with life and color and hope. If there was no hope, there was no light. With no light, there was only darkness. He knew why she wandered into the comforting folds of the unfurled, black-hued heavens; it offered reassurance, that there was something beyond the trivialities of life. It was the hope that somewhere, behind the gossamer veil of stars and colossal, cosmic giants, there was home. Home, and the feel of earth beneath eager feet.

For a moment, he merely watched her. The way her frizzy curls shifted agitatedly with her small intervals of movement, disturbing her peaceful endeavors, her solace. Her hair was knotted and pale as ever, watery bristles of milky blonde looking like a mere reflection of barley in a distorted pool of fresh rain. From what little he could ascertain of her eyes, they were soft and bleary, as their usual weary motif, and seemed no less tired and war-wearied as they had been the first day of her arrival. It was her way, the way she watched the world walk by on shaking foundations, ready to fall at any moment, child-like and awake, but falling asleep – falling into a dream-world all her own.

Despite her unruly hair, her somnolent eyes – Chekov could not help but think of how pretty she looked, her gaze doused in the dreams of the stars, the dark glow of the spanning universe laid out before her. The very thought made him blush, and he cleared his throat, trying to distract his adolescent tendency for easily attained embarrassment. She cringed, unearthed from her cherished meandering; startled, she whirled her head around, a flurry of disarrayed curls following the abrupt movement.

"Hello," Chekov articulated softly, looking up at her through sheaths of apology, heavy upon his wilting lashes. He offered her a lopsided grin, goofy and awkward in his ungainly act of contrition.

"You scared me," she explained, pressing a shaking hand to her chest. Her eyes were wide, forced open by the overabundance of liquid fear pooling beneath her lashes. "I – I didn't see you there."

"I am sorry," he replied. "I eh – I have bad habit of sneaking up on people."

She laughs, and shakes her head, only teasing this time. "I thought that was my bad habit."

"It was…but, you taught me it well."

Plains of silence swept across the stony figurines. Each too afraid to move, too afraid to move within their marble casings. Would they shatter each other in their surreptitious movements? Like a breeze, it coiled around their motionless feet, the quietude, and settled, like a murky quagmire. Neither pair of lips moved, but thoughts were like a whirlwind inside their own private minds, each wondering what the other was thinking. If only.

An idea sprung to his head.

"You ah…like a walk, da?" He asked, looking hopeful, eyes bright.

"Uh, um…" She stammered, looking over at Posy questioningly, as if deliberating her sister's safety during her absence. "Yes…yes, a walk sounds nice."

She stepped forward, and he took two risky steps toward her. Before long, they had reached one another, and she looked up at him from beneath bushels of disheveled curls. The lines of a grimace began to form around the creases of her mouth.

"Where are we going to go?" She asked as they ambled toward the automatic doors. "This isn't exactly Central Park…we're on a ship."

"We can eh…walk towards bridge, nyet?"

"I suppose that could work," she shrugged halfheartedly, and crossed her arms over her chest.

Chekov wanted to take her arms and shake her back into reality. Where was the witty, soft-natured girl he knew? Hidden somewhere, beneath miles and miles of awkwardness and fear and dismay? Or asleep, hidden beneath coverlets and stifled into the stiff mattress of a cot? He wanted to find her, so desperately.

It was his main course of thought process the first few minutes of their mollifying stroll through the corridors, Chekov staggering still from his wound, if only slightly. But his hands were quiet behind his back, clasped into one, as he chewed his lip, deep in thought. Lily's own hands, however, were engrossed in a frantic quarrel of whim. They wrung over and over again, as if attempting to dispel unconcealed marks of fear splayed in cryptic notes across the flesh of her fingertips.

They were nearing their third hallway, the crowd dispersing into the busier parts of the ship as they shuffled into the sleepy corridors. It was as they were nearing the junior officers' quarters that Lily began to cry.

They were gentle tears at first, but as the sobs elevated into unmistakable hysteria and she paused, leaning against the wall, her back shaking and quivering with the force of her tears, Chekov was broken from his pensive trance. His expression contorted, reshaping his features to match the facets of concern, and he moved toward her, unfastening his hands, wondering where to place them without her misinterpreting his intentions. But where to put them, if he wished to comfort her?

"Lily?" He asked, settling one hand on her shoulder. She sobbed even harder, and he immediately removed his fingers from their perch."Lily, what does wrong?"

She turned around, projecting the full force of her anger on him. "I am sorry, Pavel! I am very sorry! Sorry I even met you, sorry I ended up on this good for nothing starship in the first place!"

Chekov's eyes watered with tears. "You don't mean it, Lily-"

"No, no! I do mean it!" Lily's voice reached its breaking point, and her shouts, he knew, could be heard from the corridors they had just left…the awfully populated ones. She continued, despite the scene she was making. "In fact, I have never been so sure of something in my life! If I never would have met you, I would…I would have been better off! Even as a slave, mind you…even as a damn slave in a Klingon mine! That way…that way I wouldn't feel so…so c-confused, so afraid…so afraid of overstepping boundaries…"

"And then I did! I overstepped a boundary, and look where we are now, hmm?" Her hands gestured to the empty hall. "Me yelling at you in a corridor, and, judging by your expression, you have no idea why. I'll tell you why, my arrogant Russian friend…if you even consider me a friend anymore…God knows what you boys think!" Her hands clenched into little fists. "I'm sorry I tried to kiss you! I shouldn't have even tried. I mean, how could someone like you…and someone like me-"

He didn't know how it happened at first. All he knew, was that she was soaked in tears, her eyes watery and her nose bright and red as a fresh tomato. She was sniffling desperately, making urgent attempts to keep the mucus from pouring out of her nostrils in little rivers as to distance herself from the embarrassment she knew she'd have to face. All he knew, at the time, when he'd done it, was that he would have given the world to make her stop crying, for her to take back the things she'd said.

And so, he kissed her.

It wasn't the most passionate, alluring, burning with love kind of kiss. In fact, it was quite watery and tasted of salt from the tears that had trickled over her parted lips. At first, since she had been shouting at the top of her minute lungs, he caught her teeth, and it hurt. His lips stung with the force, and he knew her back must have been smarting from its terrible collision with the wall, but he didn't care. Her lips were soft and warm, and he'd never felt anything so utterly soul-consuming before in the entirety of his short-lived youth. He didn't want to let go. Even if she wanted to, he didn't dare pull away.

In all earnestness, since Chekov had found the capacity to relinquish his pride for a moment in time, he didn't know at all how to kiss. And though it was slipshod and poorly executed and Chekov knew he was doing it all wrong, he felt himself melting into her. Her delicate little body strained against his, warm…so very warm, melding into the curvature of his stomach, his chest, her hands slipping around his shoulders and curling around his neck. Her fingers knotted in the little whorls of hair she'd found at the nape of his neck, caressing, nudging him closer to her eager mouth. And, as it turned out, Lily had not even the slightest inclination as to what to do, how to move her lips or how to position her head either.

He drew back, placing delicate butterfly kisses over her cheeks, her nose, the warm planes of her neck. With soft force, she returned his head to level with hers, eyes sheathed blissfully shut. He pressed his mouth against her one last time, softly, committing to memory what it felt like, what it tasted like to kiss a girl.

After a moment, her eyes fluttered open, delicate and frail-thin traces of adoration sparking a fleeting blaze in the midst of their weary color. And Chekov was there, his fingers brushing across her cheek, forehead pressed to hers, and the bronze of his curls tangled with the pale gold of hers. He reached, cautiously, for her hands, bringing them to feel the angles of his cheeks, the contours of his features. Eyes wide, drinking in every last detail, she tentatively traced the outline of his face, sifting memories of the warmth of his skin, the thick waves of his caressing breath passing over her mouth…everything and anything that made her heart thrill and skip and lay frozen, all at the same time.

She bit her lip, daring a look into his eyes. "Did you…did you mean that?" She asked. "Or, was that a ploy, to uh…to get me to shut up?"

He smiled then. "I don't know what you're meaning about shutting up…but da, I meant it. A Russian newer commits to an act he does not mean to commit to. He means precisely what he means when he means it!"

She laughed and lurched forward suddenly, nestling her face into the crook of his neck. Surprised at first, Chekov's hand froze in midair.

But as her warmth spread into the fibers of his skin, his bemused expression melted away, and his hand settled over the bushels of pale gold curls, and they playfully tickled his nose.

"I bet they do, Pavel," she murmured against his neck. "I'll bet they do."


	9. Part I: Last Goodbyes

_**CHAPTER EIGHT**_

_**LAST GOODBYES**_

_**A/N:**_

_**This, I fear, is the last real chapter for Slave Girl. I want to thank all of you who have supported me with this story since its beginning, including my writing inspirations, Lina-Baggins and Gracy Vengeance, not to mention those who messaged me and kept conversations with me for long periods of time. Very nice of you! :D**_

_**Also, the reviews I did not expect for a Chekov story. I want to thank all of you who took the time to review, and I hope you will give Awakening, the sequel, a chance like you did Slave Girl. Thank you for all of your praises and compliments and constructive criticisms! They were taken to heart, I assure you. :D**_

_**Anyway, enough brooding.**_

_**Onward to the story!  
I will try and post the epilogue sometime this week.  
Au revoir!**_

_**PS: If it feels rushed at the beginning, then I have been successful in my attempts! Enjoy the juxtaposition of the rushing start and the slow, gradual, lingering finish. It was my intent! ^-^**_

_**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**_

_**Lily and Posy belongs to me.**_

* * *

_There was a menagerie of limbs, sprawled across the bed, woven and misshapen as shattered porcelain. Faces, warmed by the pressing beams of light, seemed still and unmoving, flushed with dreams of scarlet and petals of hope._

_But their bodies were not exposed to the tepid air; they had been much too afraid for braving the unknown of such daunting thresholds. Her small legs threaded through his, like climbing vines, clinging desperately to crumbling, chalky brick walls, and her arms lay folded beneath her cheek._

_Her breath was slow. In, and out, it spoke in warm little notes, brushing against his skin, and occasionally making him shiver, his muscles grow taut. _

_Was it fear, or curiosity that spread like wildfire through his veins? _

_Spiders of doubt, nipping and partaking of his precious blood as they spun their webs, deeper than the uncertain fathoms within. _

_Like a moth to a flame, he had come undone. And the layers upon layers of moth-like existence, bright and all things beautiful packaged into one ethereal wing, were peeled back to reveal pure soul. Of course, he found himself merely pondering the depths of life, wondering what was behind its porcelain-frail veneer. And then his mind wandered again, switching, heaving itself into hollow ground._

_A chill began to feed greedily off the glowing incandescence, sheathing him in whisper-thin tendrils of ease. Frail, but alive. He nestled deeper into Lily's surrounding warmth, draping her soft body with his own, like a shield, shades of flesh-toned velvet. In all his youth, he'd never laid with a girl in such an intimate way before._

_Perhaps he would deliberate the feeling, of skin brushing skin, but never the hesitation that hung thick and heavy overhead. A cloud, he mused…waiting to spill over and tarnish the ethereal moments._

_He was fascinated by her, to say the least. The curvatures of her feminine body so vastly different form is own. The slope of a hipbone, jutting like mountain peaks from valleys of a slow-rising torso. He evaded the more forbidden planes of her figure, tracing, instead, the delicate surface of her collarbone, the curves of her neck, and he was nothing but wide-eyed wonder. Uninhibited, now, that his petty inquisition had captured the best of him. _

_He was naked of all hindering bouts of reservation, pure fascination swaddled in blankets of soft-eyed innocence. There had never been an occasion, before, when he was permitted acquiescence to observe the female shape before, and now that he had traced almost every angle, nearly every sloping line, he found himself utterly enamored with its fragile beauty. _

"_Ti takAya krasIvaya." _

_He whispered the words into her very skin, submerging beneath the lure of her warmth, and he pressed his eager lips against the slender bow of her neck, slowly following her into the entanglements of dreams._

_Ensign Chekov, please report to the Upper Shuttlecraft Hangar on Deck 17. _

_Please report to the Upper Shuttlecraft Hangar on Deck 17._

* * *

Chekov, at first, was quite sluggish in dragging his languid body from beneath the self-sustaining heat of his coverlets. His bare chest gleamed like pale silk beneath the dimmed lights.

It was as he broke his repose that he realized Lily was not there. He could have sworn, before, that he had fallen asleep beneath the arching camber of her neck, his face pressed against her skin. But the more he awoke from his somnolence, the more he realized she was not there.

The surrounding dark walls encroached on the small, spreading fan of illumination that flickered on, white sheets of radiance spilling over his cot at the murmured command of his voice. Naked feet shuffled through the stiff threads of the carpets, and disoriented hands, engorged with lingering dreams, began sifting through the gloom for Chekov's mustard yellow shirt. He had found it, finally, when a bleating resonation danced across the shadow-softened walls.

"Impatient, they are. In Russia, they would be beaten by wood paddles for it," Chekov grumbled irritably, reaching for his communicator that was enveloped by its vibrating frenzy, left near his computer terminal. "_Mat_ would have hides on a stick! Put them in the matzo ball soup…"

At the mere, vague insinuation of food passing like afterthought through Chekov's bleary head, his stomach growled, wounded by such mental teasing. The communicator chirped in his hand as he received his incoming message.

_Pavel? Pavel, is that you? I'm not sure if I got this right…please, let me know if you're there…_

Lily's voice serenaded his ears like silk across bare skin. A thrill coursed through him, electronic jolts fraying the edges of his composure, and he fumbled with overly enthused thumbs for the response controls.

"Lily? Lily, this is Chekov. What is it? What goes wrong?"

_I think we've arrived at Federation Headquarters…we've stopped, and a handful of crewmen came in this morning to fetch Posy and me and the rest of the freed slaves. They're taking us to the shuttlecraft as we speak._

"I am on my way," Chekov promised, and nudged the communicator into the back compartment of his flaccid black slacks. He proceeded to initiate a search for his glossy sable boots, and pulled them over fresh socks in a manner that suggested tangible panic.

The thought was fleeting, as most of his focus had been diluted in his engagement of the primal act of pursuit, but still there, a brazen headline crossing the front of his mind. He often found himself in similar inattentive dashes, such as on the occasion of Sulu and Kirk's near deaths. In fact, his head had been so unraveled by the mindless cavorting through the hallways, that he had slid, in his habitual slapdash manner, past the turbolift altogether. He received a small collection of looks from passersby, ones he had anticipated the moment he took off like a spooked foal and had gradually learned to ignore.

He leaned against the walls of the turbolift as it heaved a mechanical grown and lifted into a slow state of movement. It was only as he began to calm, smooth down his ruffled breathing and regain his bearings, that he realized his side had begun to hurt again. Idle fingers reached for the severed skin, innate instincts of survival settling into the very pads of his fingertips. But as the turbolift hissed and groaned and gave an enormous sigh, settling into a comfortably positioned halt, he let go of his side, digging his liberated hand into the depths of his pocket instead, seeking his communicator.

No sooner did he find it, a voice rang out, clear and resounding like the chimes of church bells. His head whipped around, searching for the voice, the underlying familiarity deep within its hollows. Footfalls echoed across the mechanical insides of the hall, and before he had a chance to turn and greet the approaching steps, Lily's wild curly hair and war-wearied eyes burst into color before him. Suddenly there, but unanticipated, almost ethereal and wraithlike in the spontaneity of her presence.

She snaked her arms around his figure, fastening them like clasps behind his back. Her face was buried deep within the velvet warmth of his chest, undulating and soft and surreal, almost like home. She embraced the scent of him, laying it to rest on the banks of silent memory. And she could almost cry, knowing there was a chance they'd never see one another again. It was a gamble, leaving him like she was.

"You're here," she murmured into the planes of his body, the amenable angles of his flesh that beckoned her into their enchantingly alluring, ashen shades. "You're really here, with me…right now."

"Da," he chuckled, enveloping her curls with his arm and pressing his lips ephemerally to her milk pale forehead. His lips tingled and danced with fervor. "Of course I am here, silly girl. Where else would I go?"

"They're leaving in mere minutes, so I'd…I was afraid you wouldn't make it in time," she responded airily, tearing herself away from his console. "We should go. They might leave without us. I just, I couldn't just let them leave without you there. I'd rather be stuck on this ship with you than have to leave without saying…goodbye."

Her voice was lodged, like a lump of coal in her throat, the thick lolling waves of sickening emotion coating the last word with an incorrigible sheen of reluctance. Despite her dislike of poignant farewells and classic goodbye kisses, Lily couldn't help but want him as close to her as possible, even as they clasped hands and rushed down the remaining stretch of hallway that separated them from the shuttlecraft hangar. She swallowed hard against disinclination, and tried to replace her whims of burying the weariness of her eyes into the fabric of his thin yellow shirt for terms of obligation. Posy, the earth-bound hardships she was to face, the life ahead of her, much more permanent and tangible than stardust and the dark vacuum of open universe.

He was still limping considerably; she could sense his discomfort as they reached the hangar, but knew she would be too selfish to tell him to stay behind, and offer his farewells on the launching pad instead of enduring so much hassle just to see her off.

She, who'd been a fraction of his rather short life for a mere two weeks. Fourteen meager days that would be easily forgotten in the midst of automation and discovery and the exuberant curiosity she knew he so desperately clung to. In light of the events, and however short-lived they had been, she was a mere fleck of dust swept across the reaching plumes of his lifespan.

Chekov seemed not to mind the smarting pain erupting like little sparks in his side, especially as he and Lily entered the shuttlecraft and settled into seats nearest Posy. The waiflike girl smiled behind the mask of her own pallor and hunger-induced fatigue.

But as the shuttlecraft lifted from the launching pad and the reaching black horizons of space, freckled with stars and yawning, its wide, open mouth revealing colored bodies of planets, Posy became enthralled with the scene splayed out before her outside of the thick glass of her window. Lily, in her contentment, settled her head on Chekov's enticingly smooth-sloped shoulder. He responded, mutedly, by reaching for her hand, and wove their fingers into a spidery little net.

The ride was not long, as was anticipated by both Lily and Chekov. And as they stood before one another, Lily rubbing her arms as if to allay the biting chill and Chekov nervously biting his flesh-toned lips, the scene was an awkward one, taking on a life of its own. Ungainly arms stretched around the couple, locking them in its endearing little element of discomfiture and uncertainty.

Chekov was the first to break the insistent silence, lunging forward, without warning, to kiss her. His hands settled over soft summits of pale cheekbones, and tufts of disheveled white-blonde girls tickled the tips of his fingers.

She laughed as he playfully nipped at her mouth, but the laugh slowly receded into that of a consoled smile, lids closed blissfully shut, hidden within an aura of repose, and he leaned his forehead gently against hers. Her head nudged beneath the crook of his pale neck, nestling the tip of her nose against his tickled flesh, and pressed two soft kisses against the exposed flesh, feeling the accelerated, driving motion of his pulse beneath her parted mouth.

"C'mon kid," called a gruff voice, and Chekov recognized it immediately. "You've said your goodbyes, now let's go. We're getting the hell off this drifting hellhole."

Chekov shot an appraising glance toward Bones, whose austere expression looked impatient enough already, and it did not seem as if he had the capacity for patience. He began to let go of her, little by little, a storm approaching the tranquil, placid surface of a quiet sea. The further he inched away from her, the darker the tempest grew within the somnolent waters of her eyes. She shook her head, mouth downcast, bottom lip trembling. She reached for him one last time, pressing her lips to his, tasting the softness of his youth and warmth of his breath. He broke the desperate embrace, looking at her with shards of amusement painting his expression like a half-mask; beneath was a tinge of sorrow, wondering if he'd ever see her again after he left her there in that bustling grand hall.

"What is sadness for?" He asked softly, searching her countenance for any hopes of quelling the storm.

"You're leaving," she grumbled petulantly. "How else should I react? Should I do a Russian dance in honor of your departure?"

He raised an inquiring brow, but looked otherwise amused by her comment. "Nyet, but you are so sewere…you act as if I am newer coming back for good."

"I don't…I don't know if you ever will come back. I'm afraid you won't," she admitted, and he took her into his arms, swaying, a rhythmic motion that reminded Lily of the wind whirling through the boughs of the cherry trees back home, through the petals of the flowers.

"I will come back, and this time, with more rescued."

"You can't promise that," she murmured. "No one can."

"I can…" he said. "Because when Russian gives a promise, he must keep it until dead…"

Lily laughed against his chest. "Another Russian promise? I'm beginning to doubt those things…"

"Chekov, let's go! Enough with warm fuzzies, and get your ass on the shuttlecraft!"

Chekov tossed another look at Bones, who was growing more impatient and confrontational by the minute. He promptly swathed Lily's cheeks within the soft flesh of his hands and lifted her face so that her eyes were watching him.

"I promise…" Chekov assured her, and she nodded, stepping away from him before she changed her mind and attached herself to him completely with no hope of letting go.

"I don't know if I love you, Pavel, as a lover would…" Lily bit her lip as he let her go completely. "But I do know that I at least keep you, in here..." She gestured to her chest, where her heart beat erratically beneath drapes of skin. "…as my friend."

It was the last thing Chekov heard from her before they both turned away, Lily submerging beneath the solemn protection of headquarters, and Chekov returning to the dark shuttlecraft, uncertain of his own fate. Images of weary eyes and unkempt pale curls flashed like quicksilver through his mind.

And he desperately hoped that he could keep his promise this time. If not for his mamin and papa, if not for himself, then for Lily, so that he could tell her, when he returned, that he did love her. And as a lover would. Brash and reckless and founded upon wobbling legs, it was a love which Chekov felt for her that was akin to his own coltish inexperience.

But he wouldn't have it any other way.


	10. Part I: Glass Figurine

_**CHAPTER NINE - END**_

_**Epilogue: Glass Figurine**_

_**A/N:**_

_**Thank you, again, to all who have supported me throughout this story! I appreciate it greatly. **_

_**Enjoy the epilogue. :)**_

_**Disclaimer - Chekov belongs to JJ Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, Anton Yelchin and Walter Koeing.**_

_**Lily and Posy belong to me.**_

* * *

_Sparks were everywhere, falling in little currents over the three figures. One of them, undoubtedly younger than his fellow crewmen, bit his lip and his eyes began to grow cold with dread, splashes of impending tears rimming the soft blue of his eyes. He knew there was no time for the original scheme. That route was dead and gone, buried beneath the miles of metal and cruelty beneath his feet. But there was a way that he could save everyone, be the hero for a change. The theme of the plan was tragic, and even before his youth had begun to bloom, it would be gone._

"_Listen," Pavel Chekov told them, his voice shaking, but commanding in presence. "I..I have plan. It gets you back to the Enterprise, both of you two. I hack into ship's system computer and dewise a self-destruct initiating in missile launcher. This wills set off the missiles and not give enough time for the Klingons to rewerse the initiating. Get back to the Keptin and return to headquarters with zee rescued."_

"_But that's suicide…" Ensign Rafter commented brusquely, but Dr. "Bones" McCoy, the cynic, made no gesture to speak, not even to breathe. He'd doubted the kid, that was for certain, and now that the boy was on the brink of destruction before he'd had a chance to live, he regretted some of the things he'd said to him. It was too late, he knew. But not too late to save the kid's life._

"_You'll die, Chekov. You know that…" Bones' voice tapered off._

"_But, it is for cause. It will save the Enterprise, da?" Chekov shrugged nonchalantly, but the motion could not dismiss the painstaking fear in his young eyes._

"_There are other ways-" The doctor insisted. "Ways that will bring you back to your mother in one piece. That will bring you back to Lily. You shouldn't sacrifice your life so willingly for something that could be done another way…"_

"_We do not have time for other way. We only have time for now."_

_How could he argue with this? Bones was locked in a vice grip. In mere moments, the Klingon ship would be firing photon torpedoes at the Enterprise. How would the ship fare against such obliterating weaponry? It wouldn't stand a chance, he knew. But he couldn't just leave Chekov; he had to stay._

"_I'm staying with you, Chekov," Bones assured him, reaching one timid hand forward and setting it on Chekov's trembling shoulder. "You're not going to die alone, alright?"_

_Bones felt his heart sever down its middle, down the deep gashes and fissures his wife had left behind after she'd left. The boy was crying now, long trails of sorrow slipping down his cheeks, white hot and searing the delicate, blushing flesh._

_Chekov reminded him of the son he'd always wanted, spent his nights thinking about, dreams of tossing a crooning, curly-haired toddler into the air, his wife close by. It had escaped him for so long why he felt so partial toward Chekov, but so irreverently quick-tempered with the boy. And only a few nights ago, as he lay in his quarters, staring blankly at the black-sheathed ceiling, it struck him with a clarity that rang like church bells throughout the grottos of his bleary head. Chekov reminded him of his wife – his dear, soft-tempered, spontaneous wife, with such riotous curls. He missed those curls, ensnaring his fingers in their labyrinths, their whirling lengths. He'd give anything to have his wife back, to take back the things he said to her – but he couldn't. She was gone, now, and all he had left to remind him of her was this erratic, foolish boy. He couldn't bear to see him die._

_Chekov heaved a deep, shuddering breath, and looked Bones straight in the eye. "No, no," he said. "Ju hawe to go back for me. Ju 'awe to deliwer a message for me."_

_Bones said nothing as Chekov gathered his wits to deliver his famous last words._

"_Tell Lily Ya Yeyo Lyublyu…please. For me." He said, and his voice was so poignantly soft that Bones thought he might wring the boy's neck. For his stupidity, his irrationality, his inability to realize the needlessness of his death._

"_I don't even know what that means, kid-" Bones muttered, desperate to change Chekov's mind. What could he do? How could he derail such intent self-sacrifice?_

"_It says I love you, in Russian."_

"_Tell her yourself," the doctor admonished, his brown knitting furiously. "I won't be your euthanasia-"_

"_Please, I have newer asked anything of you in my life," Chekov pleaded, the gentle blue of his eyes distorted with fast-falling tears. "Please do this for her…for me."_

"_There's no time, Dr. McCoy," Rafter pleaded. "We have to go!"_

_There is no other way, Chekov's expression beseeched. And for once, Bones' stubbornness gave way. It collapsed to its knees, surrendering to Chekov's last wish._

"_Fine," Bones replied. "I…I will. I'll tell her for you."_

_Rafter was quick. By the time Bones had silently bid his farewells to the young boy, touching Chekov's tear-stained cheek with a callused, world-wizened hand, the Enterprise was already beginning to initiate transport beaming back to the ship. Bones wanted to do anything to save the boy. Drag him back by his curly hair, even if it meant tearing some of the bronze whorls from the roots. _

_But it was too late._

_By the time Bones blinked once more, the scene before him was sinking into dark oblivion, and Pavel Chekov was erased from his sight for good._

* * *

_It was a melancholy scene. _

_A young girl, wringing her restive hands over the folds of her plain white dress. Her weary eyes were fixated on nothing, staring blankly into the dark abyss of her fitful thoughts, a lurid netherworld all her own. Bones watched her sullenly from his hidden corner, the way her pale gold curls reached out in frizzy tufts of rebellion, and her skin was as weather-worn and insipid as ever. _

_How could he tell her that he was dead? Despite what she had said to him, the day he left her behind, he knew Lily loved Pavel Chekov with what little ability she had. She was young and frightened, and facing the world without the assurance that her savior would live to see another proverbial sunrise would be hard. He knew it; he could already see the creases of bereavement, distorting, like raindrops trickling down the petals of daisies beneath a tyrant, summer sun._

_Bones considered himself a brave person. For one thing, enlisting in Starfleet despite his aviophobia had been one of the hardest feats he'd ever had to face. But with nowhere else to go, nothing else to commit to but his own future, to whom would he turn? What would he reach for when home only had so many turns to take before opportunities ran dry? The night he looked up at the stars was the moment he realized he would reach for them. Reach for them, or fall and fail trying._

_How was this any different, he wondered, when there was only one place left to go? He couldn't very well leave the girl to sit there, nervously pondering the arrival of her beloved Chekov when there was no hope for his return. It would be cruel, and although Bones was a no-nonsense man, known for his brusque manner, he wasn't about to let a poor girl remain in agony for Chekov's return._

_He stepped forward, and the movement caught Lily's sharpened eye. At first, her smile was jovial, overwhelmed with such relief that he thought her porcelain visage might crack and fall at its seams. But realization wore away at the edges of her surprise, and a reign of darkness flitted teasingly over her features. Bones was grim, and she took in his expression tentatively, wondering what to make of him, the nature of his arrival._

_She was quick to receive him, taking his hand almost immediately, and a shock of warmth coursed through his skin. It only made it worse, his reluctance, as she stared up at him, noiselessly, waiting for a sign of hope, anything to allay the rising storm in the back of her doubtful mind._

_His silence seemed enough for her. It was too late, as he searched desperately for the right words, for a way to let her know without breaking her heart entirely; she already knew._

"_He's – He's gone, isn't he?" Lily's lip trembled as she spoke. "He's dead, isn't that right?"_

_Bones attempted a word, anything to convey a sliver of hope for her, but all that was emitted from his throat was a strangled gurgling sound, and his pathetic endeavor merely tapered into silence. He nodded, as gently as he could, and she returned the gesture, letting go of his hand and turning away from the grim-set doctor. _

_She was oddly still for a girl that had only just learned the death of her first love. Strangely unruffled. But as he inched forward and settled a hand on her shoulder, he realized the stillness was only a slow, agonizing breakdown. A gradual shattering. He gathered the remains of the glass-fragile figurine into his arms, reluctant at first._

_But reluctance melted into silent resignation and, ever so gently, his hand gently brushed a single riotous curl from her tear-sodden face. _


End file.
